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The Wolf Moon*
by Kirtland Snyder
~~~
The Wolf Moon last night, and it is well
named, so bright reflecting on the
glazed snow all around
that I couldn't sleep.
May Sarton
Journal of a Solitude
~~~
Chapter I
You know what youth is?
Confinement.
Take for example me, Lupo Ware, sixteen years young on this fine December afternoon, stuck in detention.
Youth is definitely confinement.
Father Quasimodo, maybe four feet tall in his black dress and elevator shoes, presides over this ceremony every day, five days a week. He teaches Religion when he isn’t being Dean of Discipline. Today is Friday if you can believe it. They call it “First Friday” around here—the first Friday of the month—and every First Fri they haul all of us into the gym for a Mass before dismissal. Everybody gets a holy card—one side a picture of some saint, the other side a prayer for the salvation of youth or something—and we line up in the hall and march into Mass like a regiment. About an hour ago, Quasi sees me chewing gum on line—that’s a cardinal sin in this place, almost as bad as keeping your hands in your pockets—so he calls out to me:
“Ware, get rid of the gum.”
Believe it or not, I wasn’t trying to be smart or anything, which, I have to admit, is unusual for me; I just took out the gum and rolled it up in the holy