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Rebekah and the Silver Moon

  by Kate Everson

  Copyright 2011 Kate Everson

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  Rebekah found Harry on a dark, cloudy night. He was standing there beneath the light post, smoking. His cap was drawn over his face and all she could see was the whirls of smoke coming out of his mouth, rising into the air, pushing their way up into the darkness.

  “Hello?” she said to the man, not afraid.

  Rebekah was a strong girl in mind and body, unfraid even when she should have been.

  He looked up beneath his cap, gave her a quizzical look, and continued smoking. He did not answer her.

  Rebekah tried again. “Um… hello, there!” she tried to sound cheery. “Got a light?”

  That brought his head up even more. Rebekah did not have a cigarette in her hand.

  “So.. what do ya need a light for?” he grunted, smoke spewing out of his mouth. His hand groped inside his jeans pocket for a lighter. He held it out to her.

  Rebekah smiled and stepped forward into the glow of the street light. She took the lighter and flicked it in front of his face. The spark made his eyes seem wild and disoriented. Just as she suspected. This must be Harry.

  “Harry?” she said. “I’ve been looking all over for you. You must come home now.”

  Harry looked startled. “Who the hell are you?” he shouted. “Get away from me, you freak!”

  And he started running down the road, dodging around the lamp posts, like he was doing an obstacle course. Rebekah took chase. But Harry was too fast for her. He disappeared under a bridge and was lost in the shadows.

  “Rats!” Rebekah grumbled. “I almost had him!”

  She wandered home along the river path, avoiding the wet stones and trying to keep as dry and clean as possible. It would not do to come home muddy.

  She thought about Harry and wondered why he was such a loser. He hadn’t always been that way. She remembered when he was very small and used to come over to their house and ask for the chocolate chip cookies her mother loved to bake. They were so yummy, that they had to tell Harry to go home after he started eating the whole batch.

  “He’s a lost soul,” her mother used to say. “Poor Harry.”

  But nobody really knew that much about him. As he got older, word got out that he had gotten in with the wrong crowd and started doing drugs. He had been in jail a few times. The cops didn’t call him “Poor Harry.” They knew him as Harry Oldspan, the one that would keep coming back.

  “He’ll never amount to anything,” one cop said. “Likely end up dead, that’s all. Wrong end of a gun, or too many drugs.”

  So Rebekah tried to find Harry when she heard his father had died. She wanted to tell him it was okay to come home now. No one would hurt them now. His mother and little sister still lived in that squalid shack by the dump, the one with the leaky roof and the rats roaming at night. Harry’s father had been a drunk and an abusive man, leading his whole family into a life of despair.

  But that was all over now. Rebekah had to tell Harry. There was still hope. They could come back from it all. There was a possibility of redemption from a lost life.

  Rebekah wandered down to the streets again the next night, looking for Harry. She did find him, but he was standing with a group of young rough-looking guys and she didn’t know if she should go there. Brave or not, there were some lines she could not cross.

  But Harry spotted her. “Hey, you!” he shouted. “Wanna light?”

  He laughed loud, then started to choke as the smoke caught him in the throat. He swore and spat on the ground.

  “Harry?” Rebekah asked timidly. She stepped closer.

  The guys all looked at her, and some started making lewd remarks. One tall dark-haired fellow started walking around her, whistling. He looked her up and down.

  “Hey, there, girlie,” he grinned. “Wanna get a little closer? You can light my fire any time, baby!”

  And all the guys laughed. But Harry said, “Ah, leave her alone. She looks like a lost cause. Needs to go home to her mother.” And he offered the guys some more smokes to get their mind off the girl.

  He had some redeeming qualities, Rebekah could see that. And inside, she knew he was as scared as she was.

  She bravely walked behind him and tugged on his jacket. “Harry,” she whispered. “I have to talk to you.”

  He shook her off like a mosquito.

  But then as she began to go, he suddenly said to the guys that he had to get something at the store before it closed, and he followed her down the dark trail by the water.

  “Rebekah?” he asked. “Is that you?”

  She smiled back at him. “It’s me, Harry! It’s your old neighbour!”

  “But what are you doing here?” he asked. “Don’t you know it’s dangerous to come down to this side of town?”

  “I had to talk to you, Harry,” she said. “I had to tell you something really, really important.”

  Harry stopped abruptly. “What?” he started to get louder. “Is it my ma? Is she okay? Did that bastard hurt her again?” His fists clenched and his face got redder.

  “No, Harry,” Rebekah said. “That’s all over now. Your dad is dead. He’ll never hurt you or your mother or sister ever again. You can go home.”

  Harry’s face got white. He could not speak for a minute. Then he collapsed on the river bank and started crying like he had wanted to cry all these years. His tears came out in long salty streams and flowed down into the river, as if they would never end, just keep flowing out to the sea. So many tears. So much pain.

  Rebekah kneeled down beside him and put her arm around his sobbing shoulders. “It’s okay, Harry,” she said. “It’s okay now. Just let it out. It’s all over now. He’s gone.”

  Finally, Harry looked up at her, his eyes red and swollen. “That bastard,” he said. “That dirty rotten bastard. All these years I wanted to kill him, but I couldn’t do it. Now, I won’t have the chance.”

  Rebekah felt his pain and sat quietly with Harry until the sobbing stopped. She held his face in her hands, and smoothed the tears away. This was a night to remember. The night the darkness was illumined by one small candle. Hope.

  “You can start over,” Rebekah said to him softly. “You can find a good job, help out your mom and your sister. You can be their strength.”

  Harry sighed. “It’s too late,” he cried. “I have done so much wrong. How can I ever turn this around? It’s too late. That bastard! That son of a bitch. How could he do this to us? He ruined our lives forever!”

  But Rebekah said, “No, no, no. No, Harry. That’s not true. There is still a chance. Today you can begin again. Put it all behind you. Start fresh. Like it never happened.”

  She wished it was so but she did not know if Harry had the inner strength to make the switch from pain to joy, from darkness to light. Did he have the power?

  She held his hands in hers and said simply, “Harry, we have to pray for help. You may not have the strength, but God does.”

  Harry laughed a bitter laugh. “Where was God when I needed him?” he jeered. “Where was the Almighty when dad was pounding the shit out of my mom and me, when he abused my sister? I didn’t believe in Him then and I don’t believe in Him now.”

  Rebekah clung tightly to Harry’s hands. “No, no, no,” she said softly. “That’s not true. God was always with you. He is here now. You can’t always understand things, nobody can. But you have to give God a chance now. What else is there to believe in?”

  Harry’s face looked vacant, like he had gone into a space where nobody could ever hurt hi
m again. He had distanced himself from the past, the present and the future. Harry was like a person with no soul.

  “Harry,” Rebekah pleaded. “Please, Harry. Try. Just pray with me, please. Or at least just listen.”

  Harry bowed his head, but he did not let go of Rebekah’s hands. Even if his mind had lost faith, there was still a part of him that wanted desperately to believe.

  “Okay, Rebekah,” he whispered. “You go ahead. If it will make you feel better.”

  And so Rebekah stood up and brought Harry up with her. She tipped back her head and looked at all the stars in the sky, and the silver moon peeping through shadows of trees.

  “God,” she pleaded to the sky, and All That Is. “God, please, be here with us now. Be here for Harry. Bring him back to faith in you. Give him hope for tomorrow. We are your children, God. Please be with us now.”

  She held very, very still and she could feel Harry’s trembling body, as if it couldn’t stop weeping. The willows moved softly in the moonlight and seemed to be whispering to them both to have courage. A dark bird soared across the sky, and peered down at them. They could hear the rush of its wings, softly pounding the air like a heartbeat.

  Then, amazingly, it happened. Something stirred in Harry, and he looked up. There was something new in his eyes, something that had not been there for a long, long time. He looked a bit like the little boy that came over for chocolate chip cookies, all innocent and hopeful. It was a glimmer. It was a beginning.

  Rebekah saw it and her heart soared. “Harry,” she whispered. “Harry, you’re back.”

  Harry closed his eyes, then opened them again. He looked straight up at the sky, as if looking for a face. In the light of the moon he found it.

  “Rebekah,” he said softly. “Thank you.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks be to God,” she smiled. “Thanks be to God.”

  And in the light of the moon, they felt a peace that passed all understanding. There was hope here, in this universe, on this earth, no matter what.

  Rebekah and Harry walked back to Harry’s house, to the welcome of his family. There was still a lot of work to do, to make up for all those years of abuse, but this was a good start. Harry was home again. And Rebekah felt grateful.

  She went back to her house and talked to the sky as she walked. The moon shone in the river and illumined her path, every step of the way.

  But her work was not yet done. She paid another visit to Harry’s home and found that his sister was in dire straits. Unable to go to work or school, Mara was still suffering from her father’s abuse.

  “I can’t get over it,” she said, shaking. “He’s gone, but I still can’t forget what he did to me. He abused me for five years, since I was a little girl. It was horrible.”

  Rebekah knew that what this family had gone through could not be mended in a single night or even a single prayer. It would take time.

  She offered to help out in the home, doing dishes, getting groceries, just to stay in contact with this family, still reeling from the legacy left by the father.

  One night, when the moon was full, Rebekah invited them outside to form a circle in the yard. Standing in the silvery moonlight all of them held hands. Rebekah asked them to join her in a song to the heavens, invoking the highest powers of the universe, the angels, the spirit beings, the guides, to come and be with them now.

  “Oh mighty moon, stars, sky,” Rebekah said in a loud voice. “Oh heralds of the Almighty God of the universe, oh angelic beings from the highest power, hear us now.”

  She looked into the brilliant face of the moon and felt a response.

  “What is this, witchcraft?” Mara wanted to know, her face darkened in fear.

  But Rebekah said nothing, just held more tightly to their hands, lest the circle be broken. She inhaled deeply of the night air, and watched the wind blow across their faces. She heard sounds in the treetops of angelic beings, like a flock of birds, gathering for the ceremony.

  “I am the Alpha, the Omega, the beginning and the end,” chanted Rebekah, transfixed in the Light. “I am the Almighty Creator and I am the humble creation. I am in you and for you. I am here with you now.”

  Mara shivered and began to weep softly. What was this? She had never experienced such a feeling that went to her very soul. It was like her heart opened up to the moonlight and it changed everything. The Light chased out the shadows of her past and made everything new again.

  “I am your brightest part, I am your darkest dream, I am the breath of Infinity,” spoke Rebekah. “I am everything and I am in you.”

  Harry tightened his grip on Rebekah and his sister. Even his mother, usually so calm and sensible, felt the dramatic effect on her family. Something was happening here. What it was she had no idea. She felt something move in the deepest part of their beings, that would change their lives from now on.

  One more thing was needed. Rebekah barely dared say the word to this victimized family. But she knew that without it, all would be lost.

  Forgiveness.

  She whispered the words first to Harry. His heart was heavy and he shook his head. He could not go there. She whispered it to Mara, who could only weep. Finally, Rebekah spoke it to the mother, who made a sign of the cross and nodded. It must be so.

  They all knelt down in the full moonlight and the mother made the sign of the cross on each of her children. The silver light burned the sign into their foreheads.

  “It is done,” sighed Rebekah. “It is up to God now.”

  And from that day on, the family grew in strength and faith. Harry learned to eventually forgive his father. Mara took longer, as her pain had been so brutal. But years later, she accepted the forgiveness that would set her free. Even the mother forgave her husband, and went on to help others deal with domestic abuse.

  Rebekah walked that moonlit path every night, searching for more lost souls. She felt like an advocate for the Lord Supreme, a messenger of His kindness and love. If people accepted the offering of her prayers, they were blessed. If not, then mercy would come to them at another time, when they could receive it.

  The silver moon smiled at Rebekah and shone its light into her heart, healing her of all hurts and granting her the power to be a channel of the universe to help others.

  And each day was like every other day…. filled with Hope.

 

  * * The End * *