Goodnight, Sweet Crowley Moon

Goodnight, Sweet Crowley Moon

Goodnight, sweet Crowley moon.

The full moon, ghostly pale, illuminates the April night sky, casting its shadow from swamp's edge, where the bulldozers strip away the land of Pogo; to the Round, where all the business lights are off except for the Dixon County Sheriff's office, where a murderer stews in his cell; to the Onion Patch, where children were still playing late into the night, and the Williams were suffering through their first night of no power; to Pine Street, where the moon reflected off the expensive pools and tennis courts; to Spitchaw Ridge, where it shined back from a pond, and a deer dared to take a sip of water.

Goodnight, sweet Crowley moon.

Larry Luck lay awake, missing his brother and wondering how a man who had lived so simply had accumulated such an inheritance; Tabitha Steel looks up into the night sky and  she saw an object streak by, and briefly thought it had to be the Starship Enterprise; Adam Garnett writes a beautiful poem to his new love; Houston "House" Graves, Jr.  fusses over plans laid out over his dining room table, his dreams for the Compton Park project slowly becoming reality; Bobby Ray stretches his muscles, getting in shape for spring football camp soon to start at Georgia Southern; Sheriff Alan Steel holds his sleeping wife and thinks about the fish that are still biting at Lake Blackshear; Ramona Adams reviews the Williams file and wonders what she can do to get their lights turned back on; Dr. Mala Jhadhu is skyping to her sister in Bhopal, India; David Roper is up way too late making adjustments to his game To Crown A King; Cokie Goodkind is visited by a ghost, but it is the living kind - the girl he can't forget; Teresa Smithson is up late with Christie Delco, binging a marathon of Patrick Swayze movies; Dotty Mathers cries alone at the kitchen table, and she's not quite sure why; a possum and an alligator build a strange makeshift memorial of leaves and sticks, at the site of where Kayak Kelly's cabin was; Grace Donnelly plays late night bingo in Florida,; Marcia Compton feverishly tries to spackle and fix the unfixable gouge in her beautiful mahogany coffee table; Archie Delco sadly buries his dog- Buster Moves has busted his last move; Grace Scopes dreams about the love and curves of Angela Dixon, and of being able to be open about it; Grant Steel looks out the window of their farm house and wonders why Tabitha is outdoors this time of night, just staring into the night sky; Gariton Hollander and Janet Roper kiss in the front seat of his Prius, parked just outside the trailer park; Albert Black participates in a toast with Billy Heart, and then tells him it's time to close the Oasis for the night; Pastor William Dan Harvey kneels in the courtyard garden of the New Life Church, desperately attempting to reconnect with a God that has suddenly grown silent; Racine mourns a loss and realizes she may never go back to who she was before;  Barry Mincher locks the doors to Swain's IGA, still not quite believing he was now Night Manager; Deputy Horatio Hernandez studies diligently for a detective's exam; Christie Delco, inadvertently slinging and spilling a glass of red wine, moves and grooves with Teresa Smithson to Dirty Dancing;  Reggie Crowley stands by the Spitchaw Pond, tears streaming, and think no one sees, but Mama Crowley does - she sees everything; Dona Cooper practices her speech in front of the mirror; Deputy Ashlynn Dixon gently strokes Jimmy Smithson's torso and wonders why Teresa ever left him; Freddy Crowley and Stephen share a beer in the moonlight; little Tamara Cooper gets up to pee, stops by her sister's room, and wonders why she is talking to the mirror - is she pretending to be that evil witch from Snow White?; Jackie Adams tries to sleep but can't stop churning over in his mind the interview he did that day to be Principal of Dixon County High School; Deputy Davis Gorland wonders if he dares stream another episode of Orange is the New Black before he turns in; the Gorland twins are awake watching infomercials, fascinated by the magic cooker, where you just throw crap in and it's ready a few seconds later;  Doc Walter Stratton, out for a late night stroll,  stares up at the Coffee USA sign and can't believe the Honey Dew is gone; Susi Kapok cuts out pictures of Bobby Ray and pastes them to her wall; Betty Cooper is up in Rondy's office, doing things that will be hard for her to explain later; Rhonda McQuaig fumes in her bathroom, angry that her 'big part' was just as an extra in a restaurant scene; Riley Kenyon dreamed about how big his store, Dixie Outfitters, might be when they relocate to Dixie Land Mills; Sandy Harley shook in fear, wondering what revenge Digger and the fates had in store for him for turning into a yellow belly snitch; Lucy Mayer mans the late shift desk at the Sheriff's office, another night without any calls; Digger Crowley broods in his cell and adds to his list of names.

And Franny Goodkind dances.  She dances as the moon gracefully lights up the children's playground she is in, dancing between the seesaw and the monkey bars.  Yes, they were some people living in Crowley who were not so nice.  But there were many more good ones, and she believed, with all her heart, that there was good even in the very worst of them.  She stretched out and reached for the moon. There was love in Crowley, and magic.  You just had to open your minds, connect your soul, stretch your spirit, feel your heart, and you would find it.  It would be

right

there.

Goodnight, sweet Crowley moon.

Until we meet again.