Mr. Lunas paced the floor, back and forth, back and forth. Daddy offered him some pretzels, but he held up his hand, turning them down. I swear if my teeth hadn’t been attached to my gums they would have fallen out right then! That was the first time I’d ever seen Mr. Lunas turn down food! I guess Mama was wrong when she said Mr. Lunas was like an old billy goat and if you turned him loose outside, he’d probably eat all the trash off that flatbed truck.
But he kept pacing, stopping only when Daddy jumped up from the couch to cheer on the Cowboys.
The rain thinned as the day went on. By late afternoon it was just a small drizzle. We had our typical Sunday dinner: fried chicken, creamed potatoes with gravy, and corn on the cob. But we all stayed quiet during the meal, stealing looks at each other. Mr. Lunas sat picking at his food.
“Is everything okay?” Mama asked, looking down at his plate.
“Everything’s delicious, Adele,” Mr. Lunas answered. “I’m just feeling full these days.”
You could say that again! He was looking full, too. If he’d grown a beard and put on a red suit, I bet he could’ve passed for old Santa himself.
Daddy declared that it was the best meal he’d ever had, then patted his belly and scooted away from the table. I helped Mama clear and wash the dishes. Then we all went outside where it was cool.
A sheer layer of clouds still hung up high, but you could see a few blurry stars here and there. It looked like someone had covered the sky with a giant sheet of wax paper. Just over the house hung a full moon, dim, but managing to shine through. Mama was the first to notice it, and the look on her face became as overcast as the sky. “There’s blood around the moon.”
I looked up. Sure enough, a small red ring circled it.
“Does that upset you?” Mr. Lunas asked.
Mama brushed her dark curls back from her face. “It’s an omen. Something bad is going to happen.”
“Oh, Adele!” Daddy said. “You and that superstitious mumbo jumbo.”
Mr. Lunas stayed serious. “Why do you think it’s a bad omen?”
“It just is. Always has been. I can’t name you a time when there was blood around the moon that something bad didn’t happen.”
Daddy laughed. “Something bad happens all the time. Even when there ain’t blood around the moon.”
He had a point!
Mr. Lunas ignored him and kept looking at Mama. “This bad thing, is it one of your Bible plagues that you saw in the teacup?”
“Could be,” Mama said. “The symbol of blood is a harsh one.”
“So you’re saying that it’s the symbol of blood that’s bad, right?”
“Of course it is.” Mama’s voice became low and raspy. “When is blood not a curse? It’s red . . . scarlet . . . a wicked, sinful color. When you see a symbol in red, you can bet it’s evil.”
Mr. Lunas cocked his head. “No disrespect, ma’am, but I took a peek inside that family Bible of yours, and every time Jesus talks, his words are in red. Does that make him evil?”
Mama clammed up and curled her fists into tight balls. She sat as rigid as a pole and just as quiet. Mr. Lunas had certainly called her on that. But what he said got me wondering. Why does Jesus talk in red?
The mosquitoes finally figured out where we were, which shortened our visit outside. Daddy said it must rain mosquitoes, too, because they’re always worse after a downpour. We all folded up our lawn chairs except Mr. Lunas. “I think I’ll stay out here a spell longer,” he said. “And like I said, Adele, no disrespect.”
Mama huffed as she walked into the house. She headed straight for her bedroom and slammed the door. I went to my room too. I put a record on and leaned back by the window, looking out. Naturally, I was curious as to what foolishness Mr. Lunas was up to tonight. He paced the yard, but instead of walking back and forth like he did in the living room, he marched around in a circle, his hands clasped behind his back. I was sure something was ticking in that brain of his, and I’d have given a whole dollar just to find out what.
Mama banged on my wall after the same record played four times in a row. She always said that drove her nuts, and she just didn’t know how anyone could listen to a song over and over and over. Truth was, I wasn’t listening. I was thinking about Mr. Lunas and what an oddball he was. I turned the record off and peeked out the window again. The moon was pretty high now and giving off a decent amount of light. I could see Mr. Lunas near the cornfield, holding a coffee can. Buddy wagged along with him.
I was suddenly as curious as a bystander at a train wreck. I just couldn’t help it. I had to know what Mr. Lunas was doing out there. Buddy saw me coming out and ran to meet me. I wandered over to Mr. Lunas, who’d set the coffee can down on the ground.
“What’re you doing?” I asked.
“Making moonshine,” he said, rubbing his chin.
I stood there, stunned for a second. “You’re making homemade whiskey?”
Mr. Lunas let a laugh roll out from that big belly of his. “No. Nothing illegal.”
“Then what have you got in there?”
He looked at me and grinned. “Moonbeams.”
I leaned forward and peeped in, expecting to see tiny lights fluttering around like the fireflies winking in the pasture. But all I saw was a can full of water, my shadow making the liquid look dark and inky. “That’s bullcorn. I don’t see any moonbeams.”
Mr. Lunas moved the can back into the moonlight. “You can’t see them because the water is soaking them up.”
“Why would you want to have moonbeam-soaked water?” I asked. It was the craziest notion I’d ever heard.
“Why would you want gasoline for your car?”
I shook my head to show him what a dumb question that was. “It can’t go nowhere without gas.”
Mr. Lunas gave me one of those big, luminous smiles of his. His grins seemed to have gotten bigger along with his body. “Precisely,” he said.
“Are you going somewhere?”
He tilted his round gray head and sighed. “Eventually.”
I wouldn’t let up. “Where?”
I could see he was weary of my questions, but I was weary too. Not so much of him as of all this weirdness about him. He’d been here a couple of weeks, living in our house—okay, outside our house—and eating our food. So why was he still such a stranger?
“Where I fit in best,” he replied.
I couldn’t imagine where that’d be.
“Have a sip,” he said, offering the coffee can to me.
I took a quick step back, then mustered up the nerve to peek in. It was hard to tell in the dark if it was nothing but water and moonbeams. The surface looked like a transparent shadow. I’d seen Mama put tea bags in a big jug of water and set it out in the sun to make tea, but I’d never seen anybody make tea out of moonbeams before. Carefully taking the can, I leaned closer and sniffed. Smelled like water . . . or what I thought water smelled like. I took a tiny sip.
“Whaddya think?” Mr. Lunas asked.
“Tastes like water. Just water.”
He smiled. “It is water.”
“But shouldn’t the moonbeams taste like something?”
Mr. Lunas took the can and swished the water around some more. “What do you think moonbeams should taste like?”
I shrugged. “How the heck should I know? Marshmallows?”
“Take another sip,” he said, offering it to me again. “A bigger sip.”
I did. Then I took another, and another, and then a big gulp. I’ll be durned if it didn’t taste a little like marshmallows!
“See?” he said, turning the can around and taking a swig from the other side. “Some of the best treats are the simple ones.”
“Everything around here is simple. Simple is just about all we know.”
He offered the coffee can to me again. “Well, who wants to know complex?”
I did. At least just a taste of it, anyway. It could be as sweet as this moonshine.
Mr. Lunas might
have been collecting moonbeams, but I was collecting a swarm of mosquitoes and biting flies. And I was plumb tired of scratching. I said goodnight and headed back up to the house. As I got inside, I could hear Mama and Daddy going at it again.
“He’s been here for two weeks!” Mama said, her voice muffled by the walls.
“Adele, I can’t throw him out! He’s our company. He saved my life, remember?”
“I’m tired of him being stuck around this house all day, wandering in and out. He’s been eating us out of house and home, which isn’t hard to do since you don’t have a job and we can barely buy groceries anyway! He’s as worthless as you are. And don’t think you can fool me anymore, either. I’ve been smelling beer on your breath—”
I’d heard enough. I went to my room and got ready for bed. Their argument still seeped through the walls, so I grabbed my pillow and squeezed it over my ears. I kept my light off and sat looking out the window.
There were Mr. Lunas and Buddy, wandering out near the cornfield. I watched Mr. Lunas pick up the coffee can, swirl the water around, then turn it up for a long drink. I could almost taste the marshmallow as I watched him gulp that whole thing down.
I settled back onto the bed. Could Mama really talk Daddy into kicking Mr. Lunas out of the house? I hoped not. He was the one thing that made this summer different from all the others. Different? Yeah. Different was good. Suddenly I stopped thinking and froze on the spot. I heard Buddy out near the cornfield . . . howling at the moon again.
Phase Six—Waning Gibbous
Mr. Lunas made himself scarce. We barely saw him during the next couple of days. I wondered if he’d heard Mama and Daddy fighting. Or maybe he just knew something was up because they weren’t speaking to each other. I hated that.
Mr. Lunas was a lot like a puzzle. Trying to figure him out took my mind off the blues and the blahs. But now he would leave before breakfast and come back after dinner each day. He’d lost a few pounds, and his jolly face was looking thinner. Daddy sliced open a watermelon for dessert one night, and Mr. Lunas just sat and nodded while we spit out seeds and dribbled juice down our chins. I couldn’t imagine anybody turning down watermelon!
I guess he was still drinking that moon water, although the moon was starting to get a dark rim around its edges. It was a pretty sight, sitting out at night and watching it shine down on the cornfield, but the face on the moon was disappearing, a little at a time.
“I finally got the wheels off that baby buggy,” Ricky said as we sat on the porch one morning, watching fat cotton clouds breeze across the sky.
“It took you long enough.” I could see some scrapes and small cuts on his hands. I guess that oil can didn’t work quite as well as when Mr. Lunas was there. Or maybe Ricky couldn’t spin the wheels as good. “Wait a minute!” I said, remembering something. “How did you get the wheels off? You haven’t even been outside.” Mama had been in such a bad mood the last two days that Ricky hadn’t dared ask to go out. When Mama was in a mood she could snap like a crocodile.
Ricky grinned and put his finger over his lips.
“That’s bullcorn! You haven’t been sneaking out, have you?”
He nodded.
“Sneaking out?”
“Shhh! Don’t go telling the whole world, idiot!”
I couldn’t believe that baby Ricky, Mama’s little pet, would disobey her. But knowing it sure brought out the devil in me. “You know, if you get caught they may lock you in your room for eternity . . . or longer!”
“I won’t get caught.”
“Are you sure?” I waggled my eyebrows at him to show that I had some leverage.
“You better not tell!” Ricky’s face was starting to turn a few shades of purple, like a spring turnip.
“What’ll you give me not to?”
“It’s what I’ll give you if you do tell that you need to worry about.” He spouted the words like a bully, but his skinny little butt didn’t scare me none. It was his anxious look that made me cow down.
“Janine, I’ve got to finish that go-cart.” I could hear a hint of begging in his voice. “It sure ain’t gonna build itself, and it’s all I can think about. Heck, it’s already August. I want a chance to ride it down the hill before school starts, ’cause you know darn well Mama won’t let me go outside after school. And the whole rest of the day is swallowed up at school.”
It was true. Mama only let Ricky outside to ride the bus to school and then home. She always went on and on in the mornings about whether he was too sick to attend or not, and in the afternoons she put him straight to bed, no matter how he felt. Of course she shipped me off every day, no matter what kind of bellyache I complained about. She’d even sent a permanent note to Ricky’s teacher saying he wasn’t allowed to go out for recess. I overheard his teacher once telling another teacher that it was a miserable existence. I’m just thankful that God put my gizzard in right. At least I can go out at recess, even with a bellyache.
“So what are you planning to do?” I asked him.
We could hear Mama off in the kitchen, baking pies. She had the radio on, and Hank Williams was whining about somebody’s cheating heart. We could hear Mama singing along with him.
“She seems to be in a good mood today,” Ricky said.
“I guess because Mr. Lunas hasn’t been around much.”
Ricky slumped when I said that. He seemed to like Mr. Lunas about as much as Buddy did. And I have to admit, as odd as he was, I liked him too.
“You think I should ask Mama if I can go out today?” Ricky wondered.
“I don’t know. She could say yes because she sounds happy. Or she could get mad and say no and be in a bad mood again.”
Ricky shrugged. “Would you ask her?”
“Me? It’s your dumb go-cart.”
“Yeah, but you promised to help me build it.”
“I was just doing my sisterly duty and trying to cheer you up. And I already sliced a chunk out of my foot on that thing.” I looked down at the wound, now barely visible. It reminded me of something, but I couldn’t quite figure out what. A crooked grin? A quarter moon? I was just thankful it healed so fast that I didn’t get lockjaw.
“I’ll let you go down the hill in it if you ask her.” He looked at me with puppy-dog eyes.
“I’ll go down the hill in it anyway.”
“How?” Ricky asked, scrunching his eyebrows.
“I’ll just ride it after school.”
I might as well have picked up a stick and beat the tar out of him. He suddenly looked whupped. “You’re hateful. I wish it was you who was stuck inside all the time instead of me!”
“I am stuck inside all the time.”
“Liar,” he said, his face taking on that turnip color again. “You can go outside anytime you want.”
True as that was, I couldn’t think of many reasons I even wanted to go outside. Not by myself, anyway. Then I thought about what Ricky’s teacher had said. I had to agree, it really must be a miserable existence. “Fine. I won’t ride your dumb go-cart after school.”
His face clouded up and I was afraid he might cry. “There won’t be a go-cart to ride after school if I can’t go outside to build it.”
I couldn’t argue with that, plus I was getting tired of feeling like a bully. “Okay, okay! I’ll ask her.”
We tiptoed inside and Ricky stood next to the kitchen door, out of sight. I saw Mama, rolling out a piecrust, her hands as white as the morning clouds. She scratched her nose with her forearm since her hands were covered in flour, and her big bottom wiggled to the music playing on the radio.
“Mama,” I said, low and sweet. “I was wondering something.”
Mama’s behind stopped wiggling, but she kept rolling the dough. “What’re you wondering about?”
“Well . . . I . . . I . . .” I felt like I needed someone to slap me on the back and knock the words out of my mouth.
“Stop stuttering and tell me,” Mama said. She didn’t sound mad. That was good.
“I was wondering if Ricky could go outside with me today.”
Mama flipped the piecrust over and a big puff of flour dust flew up around it. “Can’t y’all play in the house? It’s too darn hot for Ricky to go outside.”
I wasn’t sure how to argue with that. Mama had a portable fan pointing at her from the top of the icebox, but she was still sweating. There were wet rings on her dress, under her armpits, and around her collar.
“We could play under the shade tree.”
“I bet it’s a hundred degrees in that shade.”
She was probably right. “Maybe we could stretch an extension cord outside and put a fan under the tree to blow on us.”
Mama gave me a stern look. “You know darn well that Ricky can’t have that wind blowing down his lungs.”
“But that’s bullcorn!” Oops! I’d done it again.
“Don’t you start shooting your mouth off at me, young lady!” She pointed her sticky white finger in my face. Stringy bits of dough hung from it. Then she walked to the kitchen door and waggled her finger on the other side of it. “And you listen to me, mister! You need to start thinking more about your health. You know Daddy and I do the best we can for you. Now, you two go play somewhere in the house. I’ve got pies to put in the oven, and I want to get it done before the afternoon heat sets in and makes this kitchen too unbearable.”
I didn’t have to look at Ricky’s face. We both knew when Mama had the final word.
Ricky stomped through the kitchen door and headed for the living room. I figured he was planning to sulk inside the cave. I followed him and crawled under.
“I should run away from home,” he said, his voice cracking and his eyes watery.
“Then you’ll never get your go-cart built.”
He nodded his head hard. “Yeah, I will. I’m going to build my go-cart anyway. Then I’ll run away in it!”
That sounded plumb stupid. “Unless you plan to put a motor on it, you’ll have to run away downhill.”
Man in the Moon Page 4