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“We just have to wait for it to cool, so I can add more coolant,” he explained.
I nodded, looking past him at the row of attached houses in front of which we’d halted. The houses, brick-fronted, were wood-framed, stacked tinder boxes waiting for a lit match or a carelessly discarded cigarette. When one went up in flames, the others fell as well. It had happened periodically throughout the years. The houses frightened me.
We leaned our heads back against the bench seat and leaned towards each other. I was just starting to drift into sleep when I heard what would turn out to be a broom being beaten against the side of the truck. Jackson leapt from the cab, grabbed the broom.
“Miss Lurene, what are you doing?” he demanded.
Lurene paused in her efforts, apparently recognizing him. “I’m sweeping away sin,” she shouted, her chin jutting forward.
“What are you talking about?”
“I—I saw you,” she spluttered, then lowering her voice, “doing unnatural things with he—” and now she pointed her broom at me. “That spawn of the devil hisself!”
“What are you talking about? My truck overheated. We’re just waiting for it to cool down so we can keep driving.”
“Why are you—a preacher’s son—running around with that filthy boy? It ain’t right.”
“Now Miss Lurene, you know the Lord doesn’t think any of us is filthy—not if we have love in our hearts. And Oren here has more love in his heart than just about anybody in this town.”
She looked less sure of herself. “Get moving,” she spat, “before I have to get Lidell to come out here.”
“Now Miss Lurene, wasn’t it just last Sunday Reverend Jack talked about being hospitable to folks in need? I know you heard him. I saw you nodding your head and shaking your tambourine. How ashamed of you do you think he’d be right now?”
Lurene looked absolutely cowed. She lowered the broom and, muttering, walked back to her tinderbox house but not before giving me the stink eye.
Climbing back into the cab and slamming the door, Jackson said,“I see why you hate this town. And everyone in it.”
“Not everyone. I don’t hate you,” I said.
“Or Rio,” he said wryly.
I looked at him. I wondered if he was jealous. He had no reason to be. Rio was a dream; Jackson was the dream made flesh.
“Why not?” Jackson asked.
“Why not what?”
“Why don’t you hate me like you hate everyone else?”
“Do you really not know how special you are?” I asked. “Everyone in this town is the same, believes the same things. It’s like they’re all cut from the same dull pattern and living according to some sort of mass-produced template. But you—you’re different, rare. I was waiting for you to show up, without even knowing it. Someone like you only shows up once in a great while.” I fell silent then. “Blue Moon,” I whispered, speaking again. “You’re my Blue Moon.”
“What’s a Blue Moon?”
I sat up and wiggled my fingers against his. “The moon cycles through phases that last about a month, so there are typically twelve moons in a year. But the moon’s phases actually take twenty-nine and a half days to complete. If you do the math, you’ll see it takes just three hundred and fifty-four days to complete twelve lunar cycles. So, every two and a half years or so, there’s a thirteenth moon within a calendar year. That moon is called a Blue Moon. You are my Blue Moon.”
“Are you making that up?”
“No. Don’t you believe me?”
“’Course I do. “Now I believe in something new, in something I didn’t know existed. I believe in you, Oren.”
Monday, February 14, 1977, Locust Hollow—Today is Valentine’s Day—our first together.Jackson makes me happy. It doesn’t matter what we’re doing; as long as we’re together, I’m happy. This is quite a different feeling from the hot passion I feel when I look at him, when we touch.
Somehow, he has opened up long-forgotten memories. Even though I try not to dwell on the past—for I find that memory can become like Prometheus’s eagle—I can’t help remembering.
Early on, before the arrival of my brothers, before the drinking and shouting began, my mother had been my favorite person. As long as I was with her, I was happy. Closing my eyes now, I can catch glimpses of us back then—making peanut brittle together in our sun-splashed kitchen that was painted bright yellow; her chasing me along the bank of a river, playing hide-and-seek in the trees.
I remember my parents’ anniversary party, the last party they had before we left Springfield. I can still see Dad standing, a whiskey sour in one hand, a cigarette in the other, wearing a sportscoat with suede elbow patches, watching my mother floating through the crowd in a navy-blue-and-orange chevron-patterned sheath dress, offering hors d’oeuvres and wine and gracious thank-you-for-comings. The adults in the living room held drinks while dancing to the stacked 45s, which dropped to the turntable in turn: Miriam Makeba’s “Pata Pata,” Hugh Masekela’s “Grazing in the Grass,” and my favorite “Wack Wack” by the Young Holt Trio, which all the kids present danced to.
