He was not the moon, but I thought he was when I would see him in the dark, coming down the road by our house, wearing dark clothes, his pale face floating above his collar. He was always drunk and staggering and singing to the sky, his lunar face splitting open to reveal the crater of his mouth; a dark hole that led to nowhere.

The real moon looked far less white than his face. Like his lunar twin, he was nothing more than reflected light from stars and the real moon, orbiting our little town by route of the circular, dirt road that made its way completely around our fistful of stores, two churches, a smattering of houses, and a storm shelter or two.

At night, chasing fireflies, when I saw him coming, for reasons unknown, I would hide, watch him stagger by, his face a bouncing moon, moving toward morning and a hangover. While I was up and on my way to school, I was certain the Drunken Moon, the night walker, would be sleeping between covers and bad head aches.

My friend Tommy, who always wore a Hopalong Cassidy hat, said, one day, I will jump up behind him some night, scare him sober with a yell. That will teach him not to drink, not to stagger down the road at night, white faced, beneath the pale moon light, scaring everyone with the way he walks. I’ll scare him.

One cold October the Drunken Moon’s house caught fire. People rushed to put it out. There was no fire department. No police department. Just a fat sheriff and a bucket brigade, a big man with an axe, and watchers who liked the heat and the minor thrill of it all.

The Drunken Moon was not home. He was long gone and never seen again.

The house was nothing more than a little room, a blackened shell of scorched, framed wood, covered over in fire-crinkled ply-board; a room filled with the bones of animals and children, and lying on the floor, partially burned, was Tommy’s Hopalong Cassidy hat.