Once in a Blue Moon

by Vicki Covington

  LANDON

  Landon went to the corner store at noon and bought an avocado and cottage cheese. When she returned home, she scooped the fruit out of its skin, then shook a bit of salt and pepper over it. But she wasn’t hungry. She was too worried about Will.

  “I think we need a walk,” she said to Alejandro, leaving her meal on the counter.

  She grabbed his leash, and the dog—on command—jumped out of the wicker chair, wagging his tail and hopping up and down.

  Outside, the sky was perfectly blue. Not a single cloud.

  Landon and Alejandro started the climb. When they reached the top of the hill, Landon turned around and stared at the city below. All the trees were now bearing green leaves. Spring had obscured the buildings. She turned left, toward the alley that would take her back home. She let Alejandro stop and sniff.

  In the past, this was the time of year when her daughters played softball. Earlier in the week, her older girl, Danner, had deployed to Iraq. Landon hardly knew what to make of it. How could the daughter of two former hippies be in the Marine Corps? Never in a million years would she have guessed that the military would be Danner’s choice. But like much in life, Danner had been changed by 9/11. After the first plane hit, her principal had made a solemn announcement over the PA and sent the students to their homerooms. Danner was glued to the television from the moment she got home, long into the night. After that, she didn’t smile much. She lost interest in boys, even though they were knocking the doors down. And before she graduated, she visited a recruiting office and signed on for a two-year stint. She told her parents that she was interested in avionics and hoped to be stationed in Pensacola. Landon pictured that it would be almost like college—not too far from home, her daughter studying hard, working long hours in a hangar, far from any danger. But when Danner called her from specialized training at Twentynine Palms, it became clear that wasn’t going to happen. Now that her daughter was overseas, Landon worried about silly things, like how hot it must be. Was Danner staying hydrated? All that sand and wind. Would it tear up her eyes? Worrying about the little details kept Landon from having to worry about what was most frightening.

  Landon pulled gently on Alejandro’s leash to get him walking. He had found a bit of interesting information and was sniffing a clump of weeds from all angles.

  “Come on, buddy.”

  When they reached the dumpster, Landon stopped. Beside it were a sofa, chairs, and a table. Clothes poured from torn plastic bags piled next to the furniture. It wasn’t an unfamiliar sight around the properties that Mr. Kasir didn’t own. When somebody moved, they often piled their unwanted stuff back there, not bothering if it didn’t make it into the dumpster. There was usually a reason it was unwanted, but Landon liked to check it all out anyhow. She couldn’t help it. One man’s trash was so often her treasure.

  A voice called to her from above. “Hey, Landon!”

  She looked up. It was Sam, leaning over the railing of his back balcony.

  “Looks like somebody got evicted,” he said, gesturing to the alley furniture.

  “Sure does. You know who?”

  “No,” he said. “Want to come up? Talk primaries?”

  “I would, but Abi’s daddy gets his report today. I’m supposed to meet up with them.”

  “Let me know,” he said.

  “I will.”

  Landon and Alejandro followed the alley toward her backyard. Blackberry vines were growing wild along a barbed-wire fence. They would be ready for picking soon. Once they were so ripe they bled purple onto her fingers, she would make a cobbler, just as she had used the pecans from a neighbor’s yard in the fall to make a pecan pie. She had even located a pear tree two blocks over and had taken to scavenging fruit that dropped to the pavement. What started as a quirky preoccupation was fast becoming Landon’s way of life. She wondered how long she could survive on pecans, pears, and blackberries. Foraging, Abi called it. It made Landon feel like a wild animal, which she didn’t really mind. She glanced back at the dumpster to the bags of clothes. It was so tempting.

  Sometimes on a walk, Landon would spot a plant she wanted from somebody’s yard. After dark, she’d return to snip a blossom or two. Abi had taught her how to do this. “They’ll never know it’s missing,” she told Landon. “And anyway, if they truly love nature, they would want to share it.”

  Sometimes, these occasional finds were more pragmatic. Like the hammer Abi had rescued from beside the dumpster—the one she waved at the frat boy who’d passed out in Landon’s lounge chair.

  Landon and Alejandro returned from their walk just as Abi’s car was turning onto their street from down the block. Landon quickly unleashed the dog and let him inside, then took a seat on the porch swing. She didn’t want to appear too eager to know how it had gone at the doctor’s office, in case it was bad news. But Abi rolled down her window before she even finished parking and gave her a thumbs-up.

  Landon made the sign of the cross. She wasn’t Catholic, but it seemed appropriate.

  Abi and Will got out of the car and walked to the porch. Landon embraced Abi and kissed Will lightly on the cheek. Both of their faces were flushed, and their eyes were glimmering. Will had dodged a bullet for now. They all had.

  “Come on inside,” Landon said, and opened her door. “Tell me everything.”

  Abi told her what they’d learned from Dr. Ravi—that the tumors had shrunk, that the prognosis was good.

  “He did add that it could return, but today is a day to celebrate. I’m going upstairs to get some beer.”

  “Just because you’re well doesn’t mean you can’t come to visit, right?” Landon asked Will.

  “Abi and I have already talked about that. I’m going to make it a point to come up from time to time. And can I call you sometime? To catch up?”

  Landon got a pen and a notepad from the secretary drawer. She wrote her number down and put it in his shirt pocket. Suddenly, they were holding hands, studying one another’s eyes as if they both were looking for the same thing and the answer was to be found.

  They were not young. His life with his wife would move on. Landon’s life with herself would move on. It was enough just to have danced.

  SAM

  In June, Obama became the presumptive Democratic nominee. Sam kept hearing from his friends that if Obama survived the primaries, he would win the general. It was starting to become real, yet Sam still couldn’t believe it.

  The summer wore on. When he wasn’t in class, Sam was glued to the TV.

  The campaign announced its decision to opt out of accepting public financing for the general election. Obama was the first candidate to do so since the system was implemented. It was clear to Sam that the news anchors were all about Obama. Everyone was excited. The lengthy nomination process meant that Obama had operations in nearly every state, firing on all cylinders. Yet the Gallup tracking poll showed Obama and Senator John McCain in a dead heat. Obama picked Joe Biden as his running mate.

  The convention opened on a hot August night in Denver. Both Bill and Hillary Clinton were given a night to speak. But Obama’s speech would be delivered to one hundred thousand people at Invesco Field, home of the Broncos, on a night that happened to be the forty-fifth anniversary of Martin Luther King’s most famous speech.

  That night, Tanya got off work early in order to drive Sam to Greene County so he could watch the speech with Poppy. Sam and Tanya rarely discussed the race. Sam figured maybe she was like he had been at first—too afraid to believe it might happen. She picked him up at four o’clock. Right before they entered Greene County, they stopped at a grocery store so Tanya could pick up what she needed to make chicken spaghetti.

  “You wait in the car,” she told him, smiling. “You’d just be in my way.”

  He smiled back and watched her walk away. She was still in her work clothes. She wore a tight blue dress and stilettos. He was amazed anew at how beautiful she was. Her dark skin was lit from the inside. She had the longest
eyelashes he had ever seen. And she was always dressed to the nines. He looked forward to the day—after he graduated from the university and had a job lined up—when he would ask her to marry him. Half of Greene County would come to Birmingham. Tanya’s church was big and bright and a good place for a ceremony. Her extended family, all from Birmingham, wasn’t as big as his. She always seemed amazed at how many of Sam’s people showed up for the simplest Sunday supper. Tonight, though, there was to be no gathering. It would be just Tanya, Poppy, and Sam.

  When they arrived at the old homeplace, Poppy was sitting in a folding chair on the porch. He stood when he saw the car pull up. He was in his usual attire—trousers and a shirt, with his bathrobe and house shoes on. Only when he went to work at his store did he take off the robe and shoes. Or when he preached and wore his good suit. But at home, he dressed for a cold winter night no matter what season it was.

  Tanya hugged him and kissed his cheek before heading to the kitchen.

  Sam pulled Poppy close. He was a good bit taller than his grandfather, and it seemed that every time he saw him, Poppy was shorter.

  They headed inside to the living room. Sam sat in the rocker where his grandmother used to soothe whatever baby was at hand. Poppy sat in his old green chair. Stuffing leaked out of a few spots where the dogs had chewed away at the material.

  “Tell me how you’ve been,” Poppy said.

  “I actually have some big news,” Sam replied. “Next summer, I’ll be eligible to go to a developing country with a group called Engineers Without Borders. I’m interested in getting clean water to people.”

  “So you’re going on a mission,” Poppy said, nodding. “I’d say that makes you a missionary.”

  “I’m not a good enough person to think of myself as that.”

  Poppy propped his legs on the ottoman, settling in. “Who says you’re not good enough? You weren’t even born yet when President Kennedy said in his inaugural speech, ‘Let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking his blessing and his help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.’”

  Sam let that sink in.

  “You understand what I’m getting at, don’t you?” Poppy asked.

  “Yes, sir. I do.”

  “One of the greatest things about growing old is watching your children and grandchildren begin to understand their destiny. You think Tanya in there will be all right about you being gone all summer?”

  Sam looked at Poppy. “She never tries to interfere in my life.”

  “Lucky boy,” Poppy replied with a smile.

  The aroma of onions and peppers cooking in the big cast-iron skillet filled the room. Though his grandmother had died many years ago, the smell of good home cooking always reminded Sam of her.

  It was August, the dog days of summer for Alabama. Poppy’s house wasn’t air conditioned, but he had an attic fan and oscillating fans in almost every room. A cool breeze from yesterday’s rain helped circulate the air.

  Sam could see Poppy’s dahlias through the window. Poppy prided himself on the prize-winning flowers. They were red, pink, and yellow. They grew tall, the blooms the size of basketballs. One year, Poppy grew one that looked to be the size of a steering wheel. He didn’t know what to make of it. But he did enter it in the county festival, its stem so long and thick that it of course won the blue ribbon. Sam didn’t remember this from his boyhood, but he had heard tales of it. Even though the county had since abandoned the flower competition, Poppy still grew the big dahlias. He said he had a special recipe for good earth. Nobody knew what he put in the soil, but Sam carried the memory of getting up early one morning when he was young and watching Poppy take a bag of coffee grounds to mix in the dirt beside the plants.

  “I see your dahlias,” Sam said, gesturing to the window beside Poppy’s chair.

  “They’re pretty this year, aren’t they?” Poppy asked.

  It was of course a rhetorical question. They were always spectacular, and Sam treasured the bit of farmer’s botany that Poppy had passed on to him. Not that Sam was ever likely to grow flowers. But it was a knowledge he treasured because it came from Poppy. Everything he knew about nature was tied to Poppy. Whenever Sam was around him, life made perfect sense. He wondered how he would make sense of anything after Poppy died. But he couldn’t dwell on that. It was too heartbreaking.

  Sam leaned toward him. “There are some video games that you play with people from anywhere in the country. I was playing after class, and one guy was from Denver. He stopped playing and said, ‘The stadium’s filling up. I need to go.’”

  “That so? Should we turn on the TV?”

  Poppy flipped it on, but it was only the commentators prattling on from their studios.

  “Turn the sound down, Poppy. If I listen to them, I’ll get nervous. Are you still praying for his safety?”

  “Oh, yes, son. Every day.”

  “Looks like he’s gonna need it. That stadium’s gotta seat a hundred thousand people at least.”

  “That’s right, that’s right. I got up early this morning and went outside to pick a few tomatoes. And by the way, show them to Tanya, would you? They’re in a basket on the back porch. Ask her if she’ll be kind enough to peel and slice them to eat with whatever she’s cooking in there.”

  In the kitchen, Tanya still had her stilettos on, though she had put on an apron over her blue dress.

  “Don’t you want to take those shoes off?” Sam asked her.

  She was cooking the chicken in the iron skillet and had water boiling for the spaghetti. She looked at him playfully. “I’ll take them off when they start hurting my feet. Go away, you’re making me nervous.”

  This was the story of his life—the women cooking in the kitchen didn’t have time for the men. They were all about the food. Tanya’s back was to him. He hugged her from behind, and she turned around with a big wooden spoon in her hand, wagging it at him like a finger.

  “I’m going, I’m going. But Poppy said to tell you there are some ripe tomatoes in a basket on the back porch. Do you want me to get them?”

  She whirled back around. “I’ll do it. Go watch TV with Poppy.”

  She was working hard. Sam guessed that since she knew Poppy liked to have dinner at five o’clock, she didn’t want to mess that up on her first solo outing in the kitchen. Sam saw that she had already set the table for three.

  “You need to hold on to that girl,” Poppy said when Sam returned to the living room. “She is so smart.”

  In Sam’s family, this meant something more than just Tanya’s obvious intelligence. It meant that she knew how to whip up a good meal in a flash, to use fruits and vegetables that made for a bright mouthful, to make enough food to feed an army. She’d make sure everybody’s appetite was so satisfied that they’d push their plates forward, silverware and napkins on the dinnerware, and say something like, “I’m gonna bust if I eat another bite.”

  Sam agreed with Poppy. “She is smart, that’s for sure. What do you think he’s going to say in his speech, Poppy?”

  Poppy hesitated, then replied, “It doesn’t matter what he says. It’s how he says it. This boy can preach. You know what I mean?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I knew back in 2004, when he gave that speech at the Democratic convention. You weren’t following politics yet, but we all knew that night that we had a preacher on our hands. And because he was black, he knew how to speak—with that crescendo to lead the crowd forward.”

  Sam smiled. He loved watching Poppy talk when he really got going.

  “But son, let me remind you that I never, never thought this would happen in my lifetime. I couldn’t even vote until 1965. How far we have come! Yes, Lord. Forty-five years ago, Dr. King dared to dream of a world where people would not be judged by the color of their skin. Tell me what it’s like now, for you. You who live among white folks.”

  “Yes, but I could marry only a black girl.”

  “Well, now, that is something your
aunts and uncles would certainly expect.”

  Sam laughed. “Yeah, buddy. I’d hate to see the looks on their faces if I showed up one Christmas with a white girl. But Poppy, in Birmingham, it’s not unusual to see a black man with a white woman holding hands, walking down the street—and oftentimes pushing a baby stroller.”

  “I can’t even picture that,” Poppy said.

  “It is a different world now, Poppy. But then again, Obama’s mixed. So why do we call him a black man?”

  “Well, I guess if you’re a half-black man, then you live like a black man,” Poppy said.

  “Supper’s ready!” Tanya called from the kitchen.

  The two men stood and headed for the table.

  “Oh, sugar, you’ve outdone yourself,” Poppy said, peeking under the pot lid at the chicken spaghetti.

  Once seated, they joined hands. As always, Poppy didn’t bless only the food. He used the occasion to say whatever was on his mind.

  “Father, God, thank you for this food and the hands that prepared it, and use her hands also to do your good work on this earth. Bless my boy, Sam. Give unto him a sound mind, a clear vision, a strong and good heart. And give unto your son Barack the protection you have promised us. ‘For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.’ Help him be strong in you and in the power of your might. ‘And to stand therefore, having his loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; and his feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; taking the shield of faith, and taking the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.’ Amen.”