The men will assemble in the clearing tonight to celebrate the full moon. Now it is still dusk; summer evenings here fade slowly. The meager dinners have long since been blessed and consumed, but as yet only one star winks above the shtetl’s tilted rooftops; the moon still lingers below the horizon.
At each of the houses huddled along the lane, a door creaks open; a man in black, his face obscured by a broad-brimmed hat, exits. Each turns to latch in his weary wife and children. He does not greet the others also exiting their houses, also latching in their weary wife and children. The men shuffle into line; their heels click on the cobbles. The line lengthens as it winds downhill. After the last house, the pavement yields to dirt. A wakeful cow lows; fragrance wafts from patchwork fields of ripening wheat. Where trees overtake the meadow, the first man turns and the line swings behind. The men step along an avenue of birches, then under arches of somber oaks. The path narrows and winds among ferns and skunk cabbages, between briars and boulders bearded with moss, over twigs that the men might by daylight have bundled into kindling.
The trees crowd closer. It is already dark under their interlaced leaves, but the men know the way. Their fathers and grandfathers grooved this path into memory as well as the forest floor; such men have walked here as long as there have been full moons and Jews to celebrate them.
The men tramp through blackberry...
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