by Roger Market
turned around as Calpurnia came into the living room in a robe, drying her hair with a towel.
"I told you not to answer that door," she said. "Who is it?"
She reached the door before he could answer. She threw the towel on the living room floor and put both arms out, grabbing each side of the doorway. She stared hard at the woman.
"Jacob, leave us. I told you not to answer this door."
Jacob sat on the couch and folded his hands in his lap.
"What do you want?" Calpurnia said to the woman.
"I’m really not sure anymore. I wasn’t expecting to see a kid."
"I told you I was picking up my son. Why else would I be at that school?"
"I mean a real kid. I mean I wasn’t expecting him to be so—God, he’s almost white."
"What of it? His daddy’s all white. You got no right to judge us, but that sure don’t stop you. Let’s get one thing clear, though: don’t you ever touch my son. Ever."
"I wouldn’t dream of it," the woman said. "He’s not the enemy."
"Wake up, lady. The only enemy out there right now is this fool war. You go to Vietnam, where my husband is, and then you come back and tell me there’s something wrong with my family."
"Just stay to the back of the parking lot next year, where you belong, and we won’t have anything more to talk about. Have a nice summer."
And with that, the woman pushed her sunglasses back down to her eyes and walked off. Calpurnia watched the woman get into her car and drive away. Then she slammed the door shut and spun on Jacob, who was still sitting on the couch. She pointed her finger at him.
"I told you not to open that damn door for no one!"
"I’m sorry, mommy, I thought she came to say sorry."
"You thought wrong."
She relaxed her hand at her side, and Jacob looked at it, really saw it. While the back of her hand was dark, almost black, her palm and fingernails were noticeably paler. But still nothing like his. He looked at his own hands. He looked up.
"Why do you and me have different colors of skin?" he said.
Calpurnia sat down.
"It’s just how we were born," she said. "Some people have darker skin than others."
"I know, but I mean why am I like daddy and not you?"
"You just are, Jacob. I guess I don’t know why. I’m not science smart. Maybe you’ll understand one day and you’ll explain it to me."
Without another word, Calpurnia left Jacob alone on the couch. He tried to make sense of what he had learned but found he could not. He needed to know more. What he really needed was to talk to his father, and that was just what he was going to do, even if he had to walk all the way to Vietnam to find him. But Jacob did not really know where Vietnam was.
He went to the back door and stepped outside. By now, the sun was setting, and a broken moon had risen in the sky. He looked at it. A whole chunk was missing on one side as if someone had taken a bite out of it. Jacob had seen this happen before, always assuming the other part was just hidden somehow, but it had never had much meaning. This time was different. He needed to be somewhere else, and looking up at half a moon, realizing that the other half must be somewhere, he knew that the same was true of his father. Somewhere on the other side of the world, perhaps hidden in shadow, was his father, fighting a war to save the world.
Jacob ran down the hill toward the creek, but he stopped at the edge of the water. He had never been allowed to cross it without an adult around. An adult like his father, who he desperately needed to see. Jacob considered any punishment he might receive and decided it would be worth it if it meant he could see his father. He ploughed through the cold creek, and when he reached the opposite bank, he felt movement as something walked up on the left. He turned. It was a dog. Jacob could not tell if it was the same dog as the one he had had to turn away, but right now, it did not matter. All that mattered was finding Vietnam. He ran into the woods, and the dog followed.
As he ran, he wondered what Vietnam might look and sound like and whether the people there had light or dark skin, and he thought about the cruel, evil nature they would surely have and the size of Vietnam and how far across the land he would have to go, once he was there, to find his father. Although he had no answers for his questions, the more he thought about them, the clearer things became. He could hear gunfire to his right and bombs to his left, and he ran through a blanket of darkness in a thicket of nearly invisible trees. There was no sun, no moon, no light whatsoever, but still, when enemy fire rumbled through the air nearby, he crouched to avoid being spotted. He could not see the enemy. Either it was too dark to see them or they were too dark to see. The noise of gunfire stopped. He started running again and felt the dog’s hot breath on his heels. He ran for what felt like hours, dropping to the ground whenever he heard gunfire, and his side was beginning to hurt from the running when he saw light up ahead. He laughed, and the pain of it made him wheeze. When he finally broke through the darkness, he stepped into a moonlit street. On a road sign was the first big word he had learned to spell: Alabama. His father was still half a world away.
Jacob returned home that night with the dog’s guidance. He walked. He was no longer in a hurry. When they arrived at the creek, he turned to face the dog and then rubbed the top of its head.
"I can’t keep you," he said. "Go."
He spun around to face the water. Leaving the dog behind, he crossed the creek and walked up to the house he had lived in his entire life. Quietly, he opened the door and went inside, and he wondered if this would be his house forever. It did not feel much like home without his father. Jacob missed him now more than ever. He crept upstairs to his room and went to sleep.
When he woke, Calpurnia was sitting at the foot of his bed, frowning. "Don’t you ever leave this house without telling me," she said. "Ever."
For several weeks after that, Jacob squandered his vacation. He spent most of the summer of 1969 in his bedroom. Other kids his age who had fathers in Vietnam had managed to carry on swimming, fishing, camping out, having sleepovers, playing baseball, and planning elaborate heists to sneak ice cream before dinner. But Jacob resigned himself to staring at the ceiling. He counted shadows and compared their darkness to the light tones of everything else. He took controlled breaths and counted them. Some days, if he felt up to a challenge, he tried to draw pictures of Vietnam and war and his father, but each time, he failed to make even a single pencil stroke. There was no imagination left.
Meanwhile, having noticed a change in Jacob, Calpurnia kept a close eye on him in the weeks after school ended. She made a point to ask him several times a week if he would like to do something fun—go to a movie, maybe, or eat out someplace he would enjoy even if she did not. But each time, the answer was no.
Calpurnia tried to understand. Jacob was too young to be so moody, and surely he had already forgotten about the woman with the sunglasses. The problem, she decided, must be that Jacob missed his father. In which case she had been right all along: it was not good for a son to be without his father, and this war was dampening the spirits of the whole family, tearing it apart just by existing. Until Victor was home safe, there was no hope of mending. Calpurnia spent her summer waiting for news.
Then, just after 3 p.m. in Alabama on July 20, 1969, or 4 a.m. the next day in Vietnam, the Apollo 11 spacecraft landed on the moon. Jacob and Calpurnia watched the live broadcast in silence from their living room in Alabama, while Victor could only look up at the moon from Vietnam at the appropriate time. In this moment, separated by continents, the family was together in its reverence for the United States. For the first time in history, humans had landed on a celestial body beyond Earth. Nothing else mattered.
When the landing itself was over, Jacob and Calpurnia went about the rest of their day, and Victor tried but failed to sleep. Several hours later, while Victor was out on a mission, the broadcast began again and Jacob and Calpurnia sat down to watch. First, the door of the spacecraft opened. Then, at exactly 9:56 p.m. in A
labama, 10:56 a.m. in Vietnam, the first man set foot on the moon.
For about an hour, Jacob and Calpurnia were silent yet again, mesmerized by the images on the TV. Never before had they witnessed anything so extraordinary. The United States had not only sent people to the moon but had also asked them to walk on it. And Jacob and Calpurnia were able to watch it happen. Somehow the problems they faced seemed small by comparison. There were thousands of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam, and no one knew when they would come home, and Jacob’s father was among them—but there were men on the moon.
From the comfort of his own couch, Jacob imagined a simpler life for his family. His father, his mother, and the dog he had longed for were together with him on a rocket blasting toward the moon. Once on the surface, he and his family put on the spacesuits that would allow them to survive. He opened the hatch, and they made their exit. He looked around at the desolate but safe moon. This was where they belonged.
"Welcome home," he said, and together, they bounded off to the Sea of Tranquility.
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Gratitude
Thank you so much for reading my book. If you enjoyed it, won't you please take a moment to leave me a review at your favorite retailer?
Thanks!
Roger Market
About the Author
Roger Market is originally from Montezuma, Indiana. He graduated from Wabash College
