BREAKFAST ON THE MOON

Perry went to bed that night certain that he’d be unable to sleep, but after a few minutes he drifted into dreams. Earlier that night, once Perry and Brendy were accounted for, Perry’s father had called on every family member and family friend over the age of fifteen and set out to scour the city for Daddy Deke. Perry didn’t say anything as he watched his father shrug into his raincoat and grab his car keys, but he knew Daddy Deke would not turn up tonight. Someone had taken him, was holding him, and Perry wasn’t sure how he knew, but he was certain that the same person who’d tricked Doctor Professor’s songs into leaving the Mess Around had kidnapped Daddy Deke and was holding him for—not for ransom. For what?

Lying in bed, he tried to imagine what had happened. When Perry was younger, Daddy Deke would read to him and Brendy before bed every night. Some nights, especially during summer, Perry would find himself too tired to sleep after running around all day. Eventually, he asked Daddy Deke what to do about it.

The old man had rubbed his chin, squinted a little, and shifted in his chair. He had dimmed the overhead light even before he started reading, and now the strongest illumination in the room came from Perry’s old night-light, plugged into the wall by his bureau. Daddy Deke’s shadow fell across Perry’s chest, and Perry reached to touch its velvet smoothness.

“Well, baby, seems to me,” Daddy Deke said, “you could just make you a memory and follow it into dream.”

“What do you mean?” Perry asked.

“Well, just because something ain’t happened, or ain’t happened to you, don’t mean you can’t remember it. All you gotta do is just think real hard about how it woulda happened. You just imagine it in your mind’s eye and watch real close. Then you got yourself a memory. Once you make it real enough to keep on without you concentratin’ so hard, well, usually it turns itself into a dream.”

“Can you show me how?”

“Well, sure,” Daddy Deke said. “First, you gotta relax. Relax real good. Let your eyes close, and breathe nice and slow, you dig?”

“I dig.” Perry did as his grandfather instructed, listening to the quiet tide of his own breath.

“Now think of something. Anything. It can be something happened to you, like the last time we went to Jazzland, or it can be something that happened to somebody else or that never happened at all—like the time we ate breakfast on the moon.”

“Breakfast on the moon,” Perry said, and laughed a little.

“Right. And you just think of every detail. What the moondust smelt like. Who you was with. What the light looked like falling from the shining half circle of the Earth hanging up there in the black sky of space. You see it?”

“I see it,” Perry said. “It’s so—I didn’t know Earth could shine like the moon.”

“Ain’t it something?” Daddy Deke said, and cackled softly to himself. “Now think about the tablecloth we eating on. The real nice china the Moon Lady done set out before she got to cookin’. The way the moonjuice tasted when you gulped it down, and how much lighter you was than you are when you go walkin’ round town… And now you sort of… let go. Let the moon breakfast remember itself.”

The Moon Lady saw Perry’s empty plate and slid three more little blue mooncakes onto it. She smiled, and her mouth was full of stars. Perry stared at her, amazed.

Daddy Deke sat on the other side of the table, squeezing Brendy’s Afro pouf and making her squeal. Somehow, his disembodied voice still spoke from elsewhere. Then, after while, he said, you ain’t gotta concentrate no more. You dreaming, baby.

The next morning, Perry was too full of mooncakes to eat his breakfast.

The next time Perry tried the memory trick, he decided to imagine something else that hadn’t happened. As he was getting ready for bed, he realized he had forgotten to study for his spelling test. He knew some of the words just fine—spelling wasn’t hard—but there were a couple he found tricky—like lightning. Was the one without the e the one that stabbed through the sky during storms, or was that the one that described the process of an object changing color? For a little while, Perry was irritated with himself. He didn’t want to get a C or even a B, if he could help it. He decided to remember himself studying. To remember looking over the words, tracing them with his fingers, and reading off the letters one by one. Before long, the dream took over, and the words started to squirm on the page—but by then, Perry already knew what he needed to know. He came away with an A.

Tonight, Perry imagined himself standing on the front lawn of Daddy Deke’s house, around the corner on Brainard Street, watching as his grandfather glided past him toward his beautiful old Comet. Daddy Deke loved that car, and so did Perry—its glossy doubled headlights, the toothy grin of its front grille. Deke turned the key in the ignition, and the car roared to life. Alvin Robinson’s groaning voice coiled out of the car’s speakers, backed by heavy bouncing bass, smooth guitars, and ticking drums.

That’s the reason why I stroll away and cry.

Blues grabbed me in the midnight, didn’t turn me loose till day.

Blues grabbed me in the middle of the night, ain’t turn me loose till day.

Didn’t have no mama to drive them blues away…!

Perry stepped through the front passenger-side door to sit ghostly in the seat beside his grandfather. Daddy Deke backed out of his driveway onto Brainard and rolled across Jackson Avenue before turning left up Philip. He stopped just before the intersection with St. Charles, then turned his signal on and eased the car forward, looking to the left to check for traffic and graffiti. Satisfied, he turned right and started sailing uptown.

It was bright out, and simmering hot. Daddy Deke kept the air conditioner at a full blow, and Perry felt its chill from a remove. He didn’t realize it, but he had tumbled into sleep without relaxing his concentration. His muscles untensed, his breathing evened, and the vision crystallized around him, realer than real.

“They can hold my body, but I go where I wanna and I do what I do, you dig?” Daddy Deke said.

I dig, Perry said. It’s dug.

“Can’t nobody stop me talking to my grandbabies.”

Where are you? Who took you? Anything you can tell me will make it easier for us to find you.

Daddy Deke stopped for a red light at Louisiana.

“Don’t come lookin’,” he said. “Sumn else going on—somethin’ sinister. I got a job to do but damb if I can remember what it is.”

Haints are stealing things. One of them stole from Peaches. A letter from her daddy. I think it’s the same one stole you!

The light turned green, and Daddy Deke guided the car onward.

“No,” he said. “At least I don’t think so. This trouble bigger than any before. This ain’t just a afternoon adventure, you dig?”

It’s serious.

“More than ‘serious,’ baby. This life-and-death, this one. And not just for you and yours. For all of us. For all Nola.”

Perry’s belly felt full of shadows—as if he’d eaten so much night that it had made him sick. He had intended to pass Doctor Professor’s message to Peaches, but he had also intended to warn her that the old haint was not to be trusted—tell her that maybe she shouldn’t help him at all. But dream or no dream, the more he talked to Daddy Deke, the more convinced he became that seeking out Doctor Professor’s songs would also mean finding Daddy Deke.

But why would anyone want to hurt the city?

“Not everybody live in Nola in love with Nola, ya heard me? Hate is the mirror image of love, and it’s a powerful thing.”

The light was green at Washington, and they sailed right through.

“I been here so many years, baby. I been here such a long, long time.”

You don’t have to leave. I made this memory. You can stay as long as you want.

“He can’t know I’m gone, baby,” Daddy Deke said as they approached Napoleon. The light turned from yellow to red, and Daddy Deke began to apply the brakes. “He can’t know I’m talking to you. We don’t want him ready when you come.”

Who can’t know? Who’s got you?

“Can’t say his name, baby. He’ll hear me for sure, and I can’t risk him finding you with me.”

Daddy Deke—

He stopped the car, idling it before the light. “You and Brendy and Peaches. All y’all children and grandchildren, you are my joy.”

Wait!

“Quiet now.”

A blue shock of fright ran from the edge of Perry’s forehead to the soles of his feet. He wasn’t ready for this. Invisible, he had turned in his seat to watch Daddy Deke’s face. Now he saw something there he’d never seen before—fear. But not just fear—fear tinged with a sort of tired resolve.

Perry had to clap his hands over his mouth to keep from screaming as the rear passenger-side door opened behind him.

An oily hiss filled the car, and it took a moment for him to realize that the sound was a voice. “Whatever you say,” Daddy Deke said. “I come quietly. Just promise me one thing: You leave my—you leave my family alone.”

This time, Perry understood the answer.

YOU THINK YOU CAN DEAL WITH ME? YOU KNOW WHO I’M IS?

“Promise!”

The voice laughed. Perry felt its hot breath on the back of his neck. He began to sweat. He could feel his living, breathing body lying at home in his bed. He felt it stir. He felt it open its mouth to cry out, and in the dream he held his mouth again, desperate for quiet.

I HEAR YOU TALKING TO SOMEBODY, OLD MAN? YOU WANDERIN’ IN YO SLEEP?

“I ain’t been nowhere,” Daddy Deke said. “Couldn’t leave if I tried.”

Perry felt his mind striving to imagine the owner of the awful voice and fought the image, trying to keep from seeing it. Whoever this was must be all teeth and throat.

DON’T BE TRYNA DEAL WITH ME, BABY, said the voice. YOU COME ON OUT THIS CAR, OR I PAY A VISIT TO YO KIN THIS VERY NIGHT.

The worst thing about the voice was how untroubled, how utterly calm it was. All it did was state facts, and when it spoke, the facts were never good.

“Go near ’em and I’ll kill you my damn self.”

WILL YOU NOW? The voice laughed again. HOW EXACTLY YOU GONE MURDER YOU A SONG?

“Stack—!” Daddy Deke started, but a flood of darkness washed into the car’s interior. It was a darkness so inky, so black, that Perry thought it would drown him. He shook, clenching his eyes and his teeth, but he could feel a scream climbing through him from the bottom of his feet. Before long, it would reach his throat, and he’d have to let it out. He only hoped that once he started screaming, he’d be able to stop.

Deacon Graves Jr. slid his jacket off and let it crumple on the back of an antique chair. His wife, Yvette, sat on her side of the bed anxiously kneading her own hands. Ordinarily she’d ask him sweetly to hang it up, maybe mention that the maid was on vacation. Tonight, though, she just watched, making a mental note to hang the jacket once Deacon had fallen asleep.

“No sign?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said.

Deacon’s eyes flicked to the LED screen of the alarm clock sitting on the bedside table. “It’s half past three.”

“And you got work in the morning.” Deacon had spent years working on rigs out in the Gulf, but nowadays Shell had him in an office working to track and refine their procedures.

“Should I call in?”

“You know what I think,” Yvette said. She drew a breath, preparing to argue, but as she did, Yvette realized there was no argument in her—no strength for locking horns. The plain fact was that sometimes, people simply disappeared. Her own mother had gone missing one day when Yvette was young, and it had been hard, but eventually she gave her mother up for lost, shut all her anguish and hope in a little room inside her heart. It wasn’t time to do that with Daddy Deke—not yet—but there was a resignation inside her that worried her, made her feel as if she were betraying her husband, her children.

“Yvie,” Deacon said. “She’s a little girl. A wild-ass little girl.”

“She can help. You’ve seen her in action.”

It was true. Weeks ago, Deacon had been working late in his office when the building began to shake and rumble. At first he’d thought it was a bomb attack—but then he’d seen Peaches streak past his window carrying what he learned later was the dumpster she’d used to capture the little girl with the fireworks.

“There’s no denying her abilities,” Deacon said. “She’s like something out of a comic book—but she’s still a child. She thinks like a little girl. She has the emotions of a little girl. Brendy and Perry would follow her anywhere, but our kids are normal, Yvie. They’re brave, they’re bright, and they’re wonderful, but we can’t look to them when we’re in a bind.” He looked away, swayed on his feet, then crossed to sit on his side of the bed. Shirt, shoes, pants came off, and he lay down in his boxers and his socks to stare at the pocked surface of the bedroom ceiling.

“I’ve been thinking on it all night,” Yvette said. “This trouble feels different. What if Perry’s right and somebody did take Daddy Deke? What if you can’t find him because he’s being held somewhere?”

Deacon had an effortless smoothness about him that made Yvette’s heart flutter, but exhaustion had withdrawn that smoothness to rest beneath his skin. He was lovely, still, but he also seemed small and hard—like a pebble.

“I’d be a fool to ignore the possibility,” he said. “But if it is true, if something bigger is going on, that means we need to keep the kids safe.”

“If they the only ones can fix what’s wrong, keeping them out of it won’t keep nobody safe.” Yvette took a breath, held it, then let it out as a sigh. A disturbance waited at the edge of her memory—something wanted to bubble up into her mind. Someone had told her something once—about the city? About Daddy Deke? She felt the basic shape of the knowledge, but it was resolving slowly—too slowly to be of use right now.

“Now,” she said, her speech slow and distracted, “you need to go to work in the morning. You know your team don’t run right without you.”

“I gotta look,” Deacon said. “I gotta find…” But before he’d finished speaking, exhaustion carried him off into sleep.

She knew there would be no sleep for her tonight. There was too much to consider, options to be weighed.

The telephone shrilled from the bedside table. Yvette stared at it, wondering who would call this late.

But she knew.

Divided from herself, Yvette watched herself reach for the handset, pick it up.

“Well, hello, honey. How are you?” said a familiar voice on the other end.

“Muh-Mama?” Yvette asked. “Where are you? Where you been? Are you coming home?”

Now the memory resolved. She saw her mother’s face, smooth and ageless, her eyes serious. One day a storm will come. It will take everything we’ve got to protect ourselves against it. When the hour arrives, I’ll remind you of your duty.

Abruptly, Perry sat up in bed. He covered his face with his hands and spoke softly to himself. “You’re here, not there. You’re here, not there.” But the thought held no comfort.

When Daddy Deke had been taken, he had experienced something similar to what Perry had seen, all by himself, with no one to witness or protect him. A lump rested in Perry’s chest. While crying might have dislodged the blockage, Perry felt as if an unseen hand had reached into his heart and turned off the waterworks. There were no tears to cry.

By this time of night, the moon had risen to silver the city, and its light splashed like milk through his open window. Perry’s bedroom fan hummed away, sucking hot air from the room to blow outside. Just as Perry decided he’d need to wake Brendy and head over to Peaches’s house in search of his friend, he realized she was already here. He couldn’t see her, but he smelled her, and he wondered why she hadn’t waked him from his nightmare.

“I woulda woke you,” Peaches said softly, “but it seemed like the dream you was having was important.”

Now Perry saw her. She sat in the rocking chair Daddy Deke had given Perry when he turned eight.

“It was,” Perry said. “Daddy Deke’s missing. I think he—I think he just contacted me.”

“People straight conniving in this town,” Peaches said. “Taking things don’t belong to them. Now they taking people?”

“There’s more,” Perry said. “It’s not just Daddy Deke we looking for. Somebody stole Doctor Professor’s songs.” Perry explained what Doctor Professor had told him and Brendy.

“Damn,” Peaches said. “Awright. One problem at a—”

“I think it’s all the same problem, though,” Perry said. “I think—I think the same person stole them is the one who took Daddy Deke.”

Peaches watched him, unconvinced.

“Okay, so you know that feeling when you outside playing and clouds get in the way of the sun and everything seems to… shift?”

“Sure,” Peaches said.

“Well, that’s what I’m feeling right now. Something is changing in the city, things are getting darker, and I can’t prove that the song-stealer and the kidnapper are the same, but I feel it. I feel it on my skin.”

Peaches’s expression softened. “I know what that feel like.”

Perry opened his mouth again, only to find himself flustered speechless. He hadn’t expected Peaches to agree with him—in fact, he’d been counting on her to explain why he was wrong—that none of this was as bad as it seemed.

“Them songs belong to Nola,” Peaches said. “They all of ours.”

“I think it was a song took Daddy Deke,” Perry said.” I think it was ‘Jailbird Stomp.’”

“That song about the wino? You think he could get it together to grab somebody?”

“Maybe if somebody else told him what to do,” Perry said. He was on shaky ground now, feeling his way through these ideas. “The thing in my dream—in my vision, though—it wasn’t nothing like Jailbird. It was— That song ain’t scary, you know? Maybe… maybe the songs change the longer they’re away from the Mess Around. Maybe they’re so convinced they’re people, they become more like us. Like the worst, craziest people.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Peaches said. “How ‘Jailbird Stomp’ go again?”

Perry opened his mouth to sing and faltered, confused. “I know this one,” he said. “I can’t even count how many times I sung it.”

But how did it go?

He could almost hear the music in his mind. Almost. Perry shut his eyes tight, reaching for the lyrics. “‘In the foggy… the…’ No. That ain’t right. I know I know it.”

“You usedta did,” Peaches said. “But the song ain’t there for you to sing. It’s out there somewhere, snatching folks out they cars.”

“That would be bad,” Perry said. It was one thing for songs to escape from the piano to gallivant around town, but if they had gone rogue, that would make their job much harder. “This song knows it’s a song, too. I heard it say.”

“Maybe they ain’t all like that, though,” Peaches said. Rocking softly, she pressed her right fist against her hip and tapped her left foot as she considered. Her attitude was so grown-up that Perry wasn’t sure how he felt about her at that moment.

“Listen,” she said. “First, we find Jailbird and Daddy Deke. He family. But we can’t do nothing till morning.”

“Why not?”

“Because number one, you mostly still asleep. You musta been tired than a mug when you laid down.”

Now that she mentioned it, Perry could tell that even the vividness of his vision was not enough to keep him awake till morning. “What’s the other reason?”

“What?”

“You said ‘number one,’” Perry said. “That means there’s more.”

Peaches stopped rocking and sat forward, elbows to knees. “We can’t just leave in the night,” she said. “If your folks look in and find you gone, they’ll blame me. And they’ll be right. I don’t… I can’t have that right now.”

Perry had become dimly aware that there was something his friend wasn’t telling him. He sensed it, though, baking from her like heat from a stove. Should he ask her? What would a good friend do? All Perry could think to say was her name: “Peaches.”

“Yeah.”

Perry took a settling breath. “What…? What happened at the boneyard?” he asked. “I never seen you so upset.”

This time, Peaches watched Perry so long that he didn’t think she’d answer him. She left the rocking chair and crossed to the bed to sit with her back to him. Nothing seemed different about her, but the grace of her movements, their… their fluidity… amazed Perry, made him feel as if he was noticing something forbidden.

“My daddy,” Peaches said. “He traveling. I travel with him—Well, I usedta done. We was on a boat way, way out. The boat sunk, and we got separated. He told me… he told me he’d find out where I gone and he’d write me letters till he could come get me.”

“Did he?”

“Yeah,” she said. She lifted her left leg and reoriented her body toward Perry. He felt a little less embarrassed this way, but only a little.

“Only they don’t come to the house,” Peaches said. “I gotta find ’em. So I looks for them around town. That’s… that’s what I do most of the time if nobody need nothing. Each letter has a clue to where I can find the next one, and the last one, it said I find it in one of the barbecue pits in City Park. But it wasn’t there. All I found was chicken bones.”

“Like a pile of bones?”

“No, like a skeleton,” she said. “All the bones. Head-bone. Everything. It was a message.”

“From a haint.”

“Thass right. So I axed around, found out only one haint use the Yardbird Sign. And that was him buried in that grave. He took my daddy’s letter, and that’s why I can’t find the next one, and I… I don’t get to write back. Daddy never in the same place twice. One week he in French Polynesia teaching cannibals to break-dance, and the next week he in Australia helping buffalo learn to drive. His letters… they all I got of him right now. I nuh-need them.”

“You never mentioned him before.”

“I know,” Peaches said. “I’m sorry. I know I shoulda. I just… Some things are hard to say.”

“Yuh-yeah,” Perry said. “They are.”

“Listen, I know I ain’t really told you what happened at the boneyard. I promise we talk about it, but I just gotta—I ain’t slept in about a week.”

“That’s okay,” Perry said. “Sleep.”

“—And,” she said. “And they’s things you ain’t tell me, neither.”

His chest tightened. “What you mean?” But he knew.

“Why you changed schools like that. Brendy don’t know. Nobody know.”

“Because I don’t— Because I can’t do magic.”

“Really?”

Perry opened his mouth. He wasn’t sure what would come out of it. He focused on holding himself in the present as danger loomed on the edge of his mind. He understood that life could become a series of perils and frights, each close on the heels of the next, and he did not want that.

He shook his head, mute.

Peaches touched his shoulder. “Hey,” she said. “It’s okay. You okay.” She paused. “Can I…?”

“What?”

“Nothing.” She turned away again.

“You want to sleep here?” Perry asked. “You can have my bed, and I’ll sleep on the floor.”

She turned back to him again and opened her mouth. She seemed to try to say something and failed. Together, they sat in silence, then, slowly, Perry got up to make way for his friend.