Having Titles Do the Work You Want

In “Old of the Moon,” Cody is a hell-raising man until one day he finds God. He becomes the town preacher. While he’s setting up for a revival, he decides to go see Tar Cutler in hopes of securing he and his relatives for the show. Instead, he finds Tar’s dead body in the bedroom and a tape recorder next to the bed. It is Tar’s voice telling a chilling story of an old story elder who had lost a baby by way of a black bear and had gone to hunt it down. The tale juxtaposes religion next to a folklore mythology next to guns and whiskey (as rural signifiers for survival).

Jim swung at the dog, and sank the ax in the ground to the handle. The dog squalled across the clay dirt yard, spraying blood. Its yellow tail lay beside the buried ax head.

Jim went in the house for his flintlock rifle and Wayne squatted beside the dog tail.

‘Never did see on off a dog,’ he said.

‘Get your eyes full,’ Clabe said.

‘Might mean something.’

‘By God, you’re getting bad off as an old cure-witch, trying to read a dog’s hindend.’

‘Ought not to make fun,’ Wayne said. ‘Might come back on you.’

Wayne spat between his legs, took off his belt, and ran it through the loops the opposite way. Clabe watched and didn’t laugh. Used to, everybody went by sign and peculiar weather. I’ve carpentered that way myself. Freshcut green wood’ll bow, cup, or warp all depending on where the moon’s at. You take and build by the moon and your rafters will bend with the earth. I got that off my grandpaw and a keener man never hammered lumber. (79) Here, a sense of folklore has already been established with the Old of the Moon— superstitious notions of when you can and cannot plant certain crops. The repetition of moon in this scene links the importance such superstitious actions as re-looping a belt or building by the moon. So the title is guiding or framing how the reader should think about the actions of the characters.

And again: ‘Dog me blind,’ Jim said. ‘Panthers.’

Those boys were in a fix and the panther screams rang like a dinner bell. Evening star hung bright as metal. It was the old of the moon and there wasn’t much light to see by. Good time to plant crop, but not walk panther cliffs at night. In an hour it’d be full dark. Jim loaded his flintlock. He had enough powder for one long shot or a couple of short ones. Clabe breathed hard, wrapped I bear hide. His muzzle-loader lay beside him.

(84) When the title appears in the story at this point, it signals the weight of the scene. The phrase ‘the old of the moon’ has plenty of charm and mystery to it, but it isn’t until this moment that the reader starts to absorb the significance of the moon as a cyclic entity, as present now as it was to these men’s elders. The old could also signify the differences present in this story between the old ways of living and the new (as this piece is framed