Free Man in the Moon by Dotti Enderle

“I’ll be out by the old shade tree.”
    She just kept her head resting on her hand and never said a word.

    Buddy joined me out there, his tongue and tail both wagging away. I patted his head, then circled the layout of the go-cart. I could see how it was meant to be put together, but I didn’t know squat about nuts and bolts. I did know how to pound a hammer, though, so that’s exactly what I did.
    I nailed the long board to the thick shorter ones just the way Ricky had placed them. I hammered hard, missing a few times and putting round dents in the wood. Even though the shade tree was a good distance from the house, I couldn’t help worrying that Daddy might come out and fuss about the noise disturbing Ricky. I didn’t want to get caught.
    When I first tried hammering the nail into the end board, it bent right in half. It took me five minutes and most of my strength to tug it out. My second try got it in straight as a pencil. I stood back to see how it looked. Not as even as I’d have liked, but it should work. I tilted my head, thinking the boards looked a lot like a giant letter “I.” I squatted down again, ready to tackle the wheels. That’s when the screen door slammed and Daddy came stomping down the back steps, flinging his arms like a wild man and screaming at the top of his lungs. “He’s my son too! Remember? He’s my son, too!”
    Daddy ran toward one of the lawn chairs and kicked it hard. It flew up into the air, then landed with a bang, bending the aluminum arm on one side. Some dirty words flew out of his mouth as he picked up the warped lawn chair and bashed it against the chicken coop. The chickens squawked and fluttered like crazy, their feathers flying all over the place.
    I suddenly got scared that he’d come over and destroy what little work I’d done on the go-cart, so I headed him off, just walking up like nothing was going on, crossing my arms when I got close to him. “What’s wrong, Daddy?”
    “Your danged mama, that’s what’s wrong! The woman’s gone plain nuts. All I did was tell her to take a nice bubble bath and have a nap. That I’d look out for Ricky today. She went plumb crazy. Told me that I wasn’t going to keep her away from her little boy, then she shoved me clean out of the room. When I thought she’d calmed down I tried to go back in, but she’d moved the dresser in front of the door to keep me out. This business has made her plain loco!” He kicked the ground, stirring up dirt.
    “Can’t we just take Ricky to the hospital like Mama wants?”
    Daddy laughed like I’d told the funniest joke he’d ever heard, but he looked like he might cry at the same time. “I wish it was that simple, Janine. We ain’t got money for a hospital. We ain’t got insurance. And the charity hospital, why, they’d just let him die.” Daddy looked down at the ground and whispered, “He can do that here.”
    I felt my blood draining at those words and I ran up, wrapping myself around Daddy’s waist. I held tight. “He ain’t gonna die, Daddy. He ain’t!”
    He hugged me close, but even his strong arms couldn’t shelter me from that awful word. I hated that word! Maybe Ricky wouldn’t die if people would just stop talking about it. I buried my face in Daddy’s shirt, which smelled like a mixture of Tide detergent, Old Spice, and sweat. I clung to him and that smell, remembering how he could always make things better when I was sad. He loosened my grip.
    “We’ve got to be strong for Mama,” he said, looking straight down at me. “If she’s acting like this now . . . well . . . no telling what she’ll be like when the worst comes.”
    I felt like butter that had been left out in the sun. I walked away without saying another word. I went straight to the living room and crawled into the cave. Curling up, I thought about the world and how unfair it was. The way the grown-ups were talking, finishing that go-cart would just be a big waste of time. But the more I