By the Light of the Moon

someone, though never before had Shepherd O'Conner raised a hand in anger.

'Shep, what's wrong?'

If the lunatic physician with a hypodermic syringe could be believed, they had to get out of here, and quickly. A speedy exit, however, would require Shep's cooperation. He seemed to be teetering on the edge of emotional turmoil, and if he was not calmed, he might prove difficult to manage in an excited state. He wasn't as big as Dylan, but he stood five ten and weighed 160 pounds, so you couldn't just grab him by the back of his belt and carry him out of the motel room as though he were a suitcase. If he decided he didn't want to go, he would wrap his arms around a bedpost or make a human grappling hook of himself in a doorway, hooking hands and feet to the jamb.

'Shep? Hey, Shep, you hear me?'

The boy appeared to be no more aware of Dylan now than when he'd been working the puzzle. Interaction with other human beings didn't come to Shepherd as easily as it came to the average person, or even as easily as it came to the average cave-dwelling hermit. At times he could connect with you, and as often as not, that connection would be uncomfortably intense; however, he spent most of his life in a world so completely his own and so unknowable to Dylan that it might as well have revolved around an unnamed star in a different arm of the Milky Way galaxy, far from this familiar Earth.

Shep lowered his gaze from an eye-level confrontation with the invisible presence, and although his stare fixed upon nothing more than a patch of bare carpet, his eyes widened from a squint, and his mouth went soft, as though he might cry. A progression of expressions fell across his face in swift succession, like a series of rippling veils, quickly transforming his grimace of anger to a wretched look of helplessness and tremulous despair. His tightly gripped ferocity swiftly sifted between his fingers, until his clenched fists, still at his sides, fell open, leaving him empty-handed.

When Dylan saw his brother's tears, he went to him, gently placed a hand on one shoulder, and said, 'Look at me, little bro. Tell me what's wrong. Look at me, see me, be here with me, Shep. Be here with me.'

At times, without coaching, Shep could relate almost normally, if awkwardly, to Dylan and to others. More often than not, however, he needed to be guided toward communication, constantly and patiently encouraged to make a connection and to maintain it once it had been established.

Conversation with Shep frequently depended on first making eye contact with him, but the boy seldom granted that degree of intimacy. He seemed to avoid such directness not solely because of his severe psychological disorder, and not merely because he was pathologically shy. Sometimes, in a fanciful moment, Dylan could almost believe that Shep's withdrawal from the world, beginning in early childhood, had occurred when he had discovered that he could read the secrets of anyone's soul by what was written in the eyes… and had been unable to bear what he saw.

'By the light of the moon,' Shep repeated, but this time with his gaze fixed on the floor. His whisper had fallen to a murmur, and with what sounded like grief, his voice broke more than once on those six words.

Shep seldom spoke, and when he did, he never spouted gibberish, even if sometimes it seemed to be gibberish as surely as cheddar was a cheese. Within his every utterance lay motive and meaning to be discerned, although when he was at his most enigmatic, his message could not always be understood, in part because Dylan lacked the patience and the wisdom to solve the puzzle of the boy's words. In this case, his urgent and fiercely felt emotion suggested that what he meant to communicate was unusually important, at least to him.

'Look at me, Shep. We need to talk. Can we talk, Shepherd?'

Shep shook his head, perhaps in denial of what he seemed to see on the motel-room floor, in denial of whatever vision had brought tears to his eyes, or perhaps in answer to his brother's question.

Dylan put one hand under Shepherd's chin, gently lifted the boy's head. 'What's wrong?'

Maybe Shep read the fine print on his brother's soul, but even eye to eye, Dylan glimpsed nothing in Shepherd but mysteries more difficult to decipher than ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.

As his eyes clarified behind waning tears, the boy said, 'Moon, orb of night, lunar lamp, green cheese, heavenly lantern, ghostly galleon, bright wanderer-'

This familiar behavior, which might be a genuine obsession with synonyms or which might be just another technique to avoid meaningful communication, still occasionally annoyed Dylan, even after all these years. Now, with the unidentified golden serum circulating through his body and with the promise of ruthless assassins riding this way on the warm desert breeze, annoyance quickly swelled into irritation, exasperation.

'-silvery globe, harvest lamp, sovereign mistress of the true melancholy.'

Keeping one hand under his brother's chin, tenderly insisting upon attention, Dylan said, 'What's that last one – Shakespeare? Don't give me Shakespeare, Shep. Give me some real feedback. What's wrong? Hurry now, help me here. What's this about the moon? Why're you upset? What can I do to make you feel better?'

Having exhausted his supply of synonyms and metaphors for the moon, Shep turned next to the subject of light, speaking with an insistence that implied a greater meaning in these words than they otherwise seemed to possess: 'Light, illumination, radiance, ray, brightness, brilliance, beam, gleam, God's eldest daughter-'

'Stop it, Shep,' Dylan said firmly but not harshly. 'Don't talk at me. Talk to me.'

Shep made no effort to turn away from his brother. Instead, he simply closed his eyes, putting an end to any hope that eye contact would lead to useful communication. '-effulgence, refulgence, blaze, glint, glimmer-'

'Help me,' Dylan pleaded. 'Pack up your puzzle.'

'-shine, luster, sheen-'

Dylan looked down at Shep's stocking feet. 'Put on your shoes for me, kiddo.'

'-incandescence, candescence, afterglow-'

'Pack your puzzle, put on your shoes.' With Shepherd, patient repetition sometimes encouraged him to act. 'Puzzle, shoes. Puzzle, shoes.'

'-luminousness, luminosity, fulgor, flash,' Shep continued, his eyes jiggling behind his lids as though he were fast asleep and dreaming.

One suitcase stood near the foot of the bed, and the other lay open on top of the dresser. Dylan closed the open bag, picked up both pieces of luggage, and went to the door. 'Hey, Shep. Puzzle, shoes. Puzzle, shoes.'

Standing where his brother had left him, Shep chanted, 'Sparkle, twinkle, scintillation-'

Before frustration could build to head-exploding pressure, Dylan opened the door, carried the suitcases outside. The night continued to be as warm as a toaster oven, as parched as a burnt crust.

A dry drizzle of yellow lamplight fell on the largely empty parking lot, soaked into the pavement, was absorbed as efficiently by the blacktop as light might be captured by the heavy gravity of a black hole in space. Broad blades of sharp-edged shadows lent the night a quality of guillotine expectancy, but Dylan could see that the motel grounds did not yet seethe with the squads of promised pistol-packing killers.

His white Ford Expedition was parked nearby. Bolted to the roof, a watertight container held artist's supplies as well as finished paintings that he had offered for sale at a recent art festival in Tucson (where five pieces had sold) and would offer also in Santa Fe and at similar events thereafter.

As he opened the tailgate and quickly loaded the suitcases into the SUV, he looked left and right, and behind himself, leery of being assaulted again, as though crazed physicians armed with enormous syringes full of stuff could be expected to travel in packs as surely as did coyotes in desert canyons, wolves in forests primeval, and personal-injury attorneys at any prospect of product liability.

When he returned to the motel room, he found Shep where he had left him: standing in his stocking feet, eyes closed, exhibiting his annoyingly impressive vocabulary. '-fluorescence, phosphorescence, bioluminescence-'

Dylan hurried to the desk, broke apart the finished portion of the jigsaw, and scooped double handfuls of Shinto temple and cherry trees into the waiting box. He preferred to save time by leaving the puzzle, but he felt certain that Shep would refuse to go without it.

Shepherd surely heard and recognized the distinctive sound of pasteboard pieces being tumbled together in a pile of soft rubble. Ordinarily, he would have moved at once to protect his unfinished project, but not this time. Eyes closed, he continued urgently to recite the many names and forms of light:'-lightning, fulmination, flying