Free And They Danced by the Light of the Moon by Heather O'Neill Page A

floor, like a shovel hitting the rock, as children were about to be begotten into unhappy households. And God saw that it was good.
The inhabitants of Val des Loups were religious in the sense that they believed in miracles. There was a tale that people told about a man named Jacob who, after a night of heavy drinking, woke up to find a tattoo of the Virgin Mary on his arm. Another man forgot his boots at work, and they walked home by themselves and were waiting for him at the front door. One New Year’s Eve, a man was able to sing like Charles Aznavour for one single night, and the next day he went back to being tone deaf.
Sometimes the principal himself felt just as trapped as Jules here. The stars were so low. It made him feel as if he was a cricket trapped in a jar and the stars were holes punched in the lid so he could breathe. He met a little girl wearing nothing but a red coat that was too small for her, a pair of underwear, and rubber boots. She was carrying a mouse in her hands. When he asked her what the mouse’s name was, she said, Papillon. That was the closest he had come to finding anything like a poem in Val des Loups.
The principal found himself surprised by how much he sometimes enjoyed Jules’s company. The boy didn’t do well in school and certainly didn’t know anything about the world. Jules had once asked whether or not the Vietnam War was over, and it was 1982. But there was something imaginative and clever about him. Dreams could still grow in the North, like the wee flowers with brilliant colours that bloomed around the rocks. He once saw Jules in the display window of the thrift store, sitting on a couch, reading a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo . It was as if Jules was a second-hand little human being, on sale with the broken lamps, with an orange price tag stapled somewhere on his sleeve. Jules had looked up and saluted the principal from the display. The principal realized that Jules understood the tragedy of his own little life. How on earth did you guide someone like that? “I’m not going to be able to let you go to the dance tomorrow night.”
“Oh, come on!” Jules screamed. “That’s not fair.”
Jules was about to protest more, but he started coughing. He took out a dark blue handkerchief with red horses on it from his pocket and held it up to his mouth as he coughed violently into it. It sounded like a dog barking behind a door, desperate to get out. That cough, Jesus! For as long as the principal could remember, Jules had had bronchitis. He had never heard a kid with a chronic cough like that. How unfair life is, from the perspective of a child. How unfair birth is.

JULES’S FOOTSTEPS on the gravel road outside the school made the sound of someone tsking. The other kids would get all excited and gather around when Jules did something crazy. It made him feel liked. But then he would end up facing his punishment all alone. Being the class clown was like always picking up the cheque and having no one appreciate it. He had been looking forward to that dance for weeks because Manon Trépanier had said she would go with him. That was the only reason he had wanted to go.
The hills around Val des Loups were dark and covered with enormous trees. You couldn’t help but wonder if you even existed when you lived out here. A city was made with all sorts of rooms and corridors, so that wherever you were you felt like a giant. Out here, the trees wouldn’t even acknowledge you. The wind followed and nagged Jules like a scorned woman. It kept tearing him apart and saying terrible things, and then it would start apologizing and beg to be taken back. Jules zipped up his blue ski jacket and pulled his hat down over his head.
He passed the white clapboard church with a neon cross on the front of it. The priest was out front putting his garbage out. He wore a checkered jacket with a sheepskin collar. It was strange to be a priest, Jules thought. You only needed one of everything. You only