“Sometimes songs really speak to me,” he said.

“Which ones?” I asked

“Like ‘Side by Side,’” he answered.

“Oh we ain’t got a barrel of money…” I sang

“Maybe we’re ragged and funny…” he added.

“But we’ll travel along,” …I countered.

“Singing a song… “ he said, then paused.

Then we both sang ‘Side by Side.’”

After a few moments my old friend looked over and said, “Sometimes things doesn’t work out that way.”

“I know,” I said, “I didn’t mean to open up a wound.”

“It’s OK,” he answered, then looked out at the sky.

“She tried to help me find the man in that moon,” he mused. “But all I could see was one thrown upward and to the right, as if by a ocean wave —until I finally realized I had been looking for a full shot of the moon-man and not a close up of his face. She tried to help me see him all those years, but she could not. And by the time I was able to see him, it was too late.”

I paused for a moment, then sang “I saw your face in the moon, Honey….You threw a smile at me…”

“The Jimmy Dean Show,” he smiled , “from the fifties…used to watch Jimmy sing that, before I headed out for school.”

A cloud passed over the moon, as he sang these words:

… And I could see your smile… fade with the gloom, When I saw your face in the moon.

He shook his head as if to banish the thought, then continued, “We always rented a place on the front row at Cherry Grove, so at night she could see the water, bathed in moonlight so intense that every ripple turned to silver. “

“’I love the moon,’” she said.

My friend and I sat in silence for a while, then I spoke. “What about ‘Shine on Harvest Moon?’”

“That wasn’t our kind of song,” he answered. “I love that old 78 disc, but I don’t like some of the words. Can you guess which ones?

“Tell me.”

Shine on, shine on Harvest Moon, up in the sky.

I ain’t had no loving since January, February, June and July.

“Love is not a commodity,” he said.

“But the moon and love do go together,” I said.

“Like a rose does,” he replied, “but a rose seems warmer, and more constant.”

“‘Moon River’ is not really a moon song,” he said,“ but she loved to hear Andy Williams sing it:”

Two drifters… off to see the world…there’s such a lot of world to see.

We’re after the same rainbows end… Waiting round the bend,

My huckleberry friend …Moon River… and me.

“That one speaks to you, doesn’t it?” I said.

He nodded. “I think it spoke to both of us, once —a moon, a river…and a lot of hope.”

“Going back to Jimmy Dean’s song,” he continued, “I did see her face ‘fade with the gloom,’ but I did not know what to do about it.”

“While she was still here?”

Yes.” He paused. “Something sad happened to her, long before we ever met— something to keep her cautious, to keep her wary, to keep her at a distance. She tried to come close….time after time. But she just could not stay there.”

“Maybe a year ago, I asked her ’Did you ever feel love at home?’ She did not answer me, directly. All she ever said was ‘I had a TV.’ We were watching TV together at the time… and watched even more, in the months before she left.” He smiled. “I think we saw every ‘Gunsmoke’ once, some of them two or three times.”

“That was all we could do. There was nothing else, for by then, she had pulled back from every friend she ever had— right down to the little dog at her feet, wanting to be lifted onto her lap.”

“I kept hoping things would get better,” he continued. “But singing another old song brought the truth.”

“Which song?”

“I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places.”

“Really? “ I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Two months before she left, I came out here and sang it:”

I’ll be seeing you In every lovely summer’s day, In everything that’s bright and gay… I’ll always think of you that way. I’ll find you in the morning mist, And when the night is new I’ll be looking at the moon… But I’ll be seeing you.

Singing the last phrase, he began to weep, dried his eyes and said, “Then I sang that last line over, changing just one word:”

“I’ll be looking at the moon…AND I’ll be seeing you.”

We sat quietly for a while. Moonlight beamed through the window.

“Two months later, I took her to the emergency room,” he said. “After five hours, a nurse and a security guard came, and the four us walked to her temporary room. As the nurse prepared her for bed, I left. I did not get to say ‘goodbye.’”

He wiped his eyes, then said softly, “I looked at my phone when I reached the car: it was 2:06 a.m. I got in, sat quietly for a minute, then said, ‘Lord I’m sorry to say this, but I’m so relieved.’”

He paused for a moment, then looked at me, “The next day I cried… that’s the way it’s been, ever since.”

“I know how deeply she’s hurting… and I’m not able to help her….”

“I go to see her every day.”

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Leon Smith