FOR JAY JENNINGS
Three pimple-faced boys stared up at the sun, eyes hidden behind the blue-and-red-lensed glasses they’d purchased from the MAGA tent. More of a canopy than a tent, really, white polyester stretched tight over a cheap steel frame. The kind that are all the time getting blown away at the beach, rolling like giant metal tumbleweeds through the sand fences and into the protected dunes.
That’s where Cloke O’Neil had found this particular canopy, way down in Pensacola. Same place he’d met Clementine Baldwin, a brunette with a bob cut who’d said she was from “London … Arkansas,” flirting with Cloke at the bar out back of the Paradise Inn, a bayside motel with a sign carved and painted to look like the sun. Same star those pizza-faced boys were still staring at, standing in the weeds around a primitive, timber-framed tabernacle with a steeple on the top and everything. “Black Jack Baptist” read the words to the left of the double doors, one of three churches in Clementine’s tiny hometown.
“Were those the glasses I ordered?”
Cloke liked the way his new girlfriend talked, a soft twang to certain syllables, like how she’d said “Arkansaw” that first night he’d met her. Two months later, they were living together above the Pasta Grill, an Italian restaurant on the corner of South Denver and Main in Russellville. The town of thirty thousand sat just across the lake from London, which was close enough for Cloke, a military brat who’d never stayed anywhere long enough to call it “home.” Russellville boasted a university, a nuclear plant and about a hundred churches of varying sizes and denominations. “Welcome to the Bible Belt.” That’s what Clementine had told him in the Clinton National Airport after his flight landed in Little Rock. Cloke didn’t get it; he was starting to get it now.
“The glasses, babe,” Clementine said, reaching beneath a card table they’d borrowed from the church. “Do they work? I mean, look at those boys.”
Cloke saw them, bent at the waist, rubbing their eyes with their fists. He heard plastic crinkling, looked down, and saw Clementine rummaging through the box of cardboard-frame glasses he’d ordered off Amazon. A dollar ninety-nine per dozen. Cloke watched as the trio of boys scattered and started walking zombie-style toward the church.
“Blinded by the Light” ended and “Dancing in the Dark” started up on Cloke’s portable Bluetooth speaker. He brought it along anytime they set up their traveling shop. The tunes were often themed and helped set the mood. The hairy-shouldered men littering the lawn didn’t seem to notice the music. The women looked worse, somehow. Either huge and stoop shouldered, or meth-mouthed and bony. There was no in between. There was, however, an undercurrent of strength that ran through all of them. Though Cloke had spent days — whole weekends, sometimes — around people like these, he’d never noticed their sinewy forearms and quarter-horse calves. Muscles defined by work covered in varying degrees of politically themed clothing, the same cheap shit Cloke had been hawking ever since he’d first arrived in Arkansas. The shirts were made in India, the hats Vietnam, but they were all stamped with similar messages promoting the greatness of America.
“‘The most cost-effective solution for your next 3D event?’” Clementine held up a package with a label Cloke must have missed. “Jesus Christ. 3D glasses? These are for the movies, not a solar eclipse.”
Lauren Puchowski
Cloke tried to act surprised but his heart wasn’t in it. Despite the patriotic colored lenses, the glasses hadn’t sold as well as he’d hoped. One man, a potbellied yokel wearing a trucker hat with two furry bear arms printed across the crown, had even gone so far as to ask why Cloke was selling glasses at all.
“Them scientists just trying to scare us again,” the man had said. “Yeah, buddy. It’s all a scam. Ain’t nobody gonna tell me how to watch a e-clipse. Hell, few years back we had one and I stared straight at it. Look at me now.”
Cloke recalled the man’s milky white orbs and jittering pupils as Clementine packed the rest of the glasses away. The glasses didn’t matter. That wasn’t why Cloke had hauled his canopy down from their loft apartment over in Russellville, why he had the tunes going and a high-dollar shotgun displayed in a polymer hard case, ready to be raffled off. Cloke was at Black Jack Baptist because of the eclipse. A total solar eclipse, a once in a lifetime celestial experience. That’s what every flyer, billboard, bulk email, and even the banners that hung from the streetlights outside the Pasta Grill all said, and they were right.
By some stroke of luck, this little patch of Nowhere, Arkansas, was in the “path of totality.” Russellville had been chosen by NASA as one of the top ten places in the world from which to view the event. The chamber of commerce had spent the last year prepping for the massive influx of starry-eyed tourists. The refurbished train depot, the hub for everything eclipse-related, had arranged a full day’s worth of solar-themed activities, each one geared toward boosting local commerce. Yes, there was money to be made, but precautions had been taken as well. The Russellville Police Department would be out in full force, which was why Cloke O’Neil was in London, eight miles away from the action, surrounded by a horde of country folk who simply wanted to watch the “e-clipse” without having to worry about protective eyewear.
A gap-toothed woman slinked past one of the canopy’s duct-taped legs and nodded at the shotgun in the case. “That a Benelli?”
“828, over under,” Clementine said, automatic, like she worked in a Walmart sporting goods department. Cloke watched her slide the box of glasses beneath the table with one foot. “Daddy left it to me when he passed. Rayburn Baldwin. Know him?”
“The mussel diver?”
“Used to be, yeah, that’s him.”
The woman tongued her tooth hole. “What you selling his gun for, hon?”
“I’m not. This is a raffle. Twenty bucks puts your name in the drawing.” Clementine sounded almost proud. Maybe she was. Yes, Cloke thought, she was proud of her father’s gun, the same weapon she hadn’t let Cloke handle, barely even touch. It meant something to her.
“And,” Cloke said, straightening, “all the money goes to the church.”
“Black Jack Baptist?”
“Sure as shooting.” Cloke grinned.
The woman’s beady eyes narrowed.
“My dad went to Black Jack,” Clementine said. “Had his memorial service right there inside the church.”
The woman raised one eyebrow, inspecting Clementine’s “Let’s Go Brandon!” tank top and her faded skinny jeans. The bob cut didn’t match the redneck aesthetic, more hipster than hillbilly, but the woman went digging in her tube top anyway. Wadded twenty in hand, she filled out her ticket and passed it, along with the money, to Clementine. Cloke watched his girlfriend drop the crumpled bill into the hard case and slip the ticket into a box with ”church raffle” scribbled across the front.
The church bit had been Cloke’s idea, the cherry on top of his master plan, a way to make sure every knuckle-dragger in London forked over their cash. Twenty bucks for a shot at a $4,000 shotgun, and the proceeds went to the church? Clodhopper catnip, plain and simple. Clementine had liked the idea, too. Saw it as some sort of penance, a tribute or something. Cloke couldn’t understand why she’d want to give anything to those yayhoos but found her innocence cute in a country mouse kind of way. There had to be a couple grand in that case now, so much green Cloke could barely see the Benelli’s slick blue barrel.
He was still staring at the money when Clementine slid her arms around his waist and said, “Daddy would’ve liked all this.”
Lauren Puchowski
Cloke ran a hand over her smooth, pale skin, wondering what Rayburn Baldwin would’ve thought about his daughter spending the last two months selling bootleg MAGA merch to her fellow Arkansawyers. “Cloke and Clem.” It had a ring to it. The millennial version of Bonnie and Clyde. Together they’d swindled more money out of poor country folk than most politicians. Why? Well, they were both up to their eyeballs in debt, mainly from student loans. Liberal arts colleges weren’t cheap, whether you graduated or not. And selling MAGA swag was easier than working, easier in Arkansas than it’d been in Denver, or even Dallas, just a few of the stops Cloke had made since Trump first donned his infamous red hat in the summer of 2015.
Clementine turned out to be his secret sauce. After they’d started dating, business boomed. She knew how to talk to these people, knew which towns to hit, which events were worth attending. County fairs and gun shows, mostly. This eclipse deal at Black Jack Baptist felt different. Too close to home, maybe? Cloke wasn’t sure, which was why he’d kept his girlfriend in the dark about his plan for when the moon passed between the Earth and the sun.
Clementine said, “Look,” and lifted one hand, pointing at the shadows creeping in over the church house lawn. “It’s happening.”
***
The world around Clementine Baldwin had grown dim, and it wasn’t just from the eclipse. It was everything: the state of the country, the state of Arkansas, the upcoming election, her hometown, London, and even her new boyfriend. How all those things worked together, or didn’t work at all. That was the problem. The disturbance Clementine felt in her heart, like the earth’s atmospheric turbulence refracting all around her.
Solar bands, alternating lines of light and dark, slithered across the canopy’s white cover. Totality was close now, the solar crescent thinning by the second, a narrow slit like Clementine’s eyes still squinting up at that sheet of polyester, still standing under the canopy because she didn’t have any ISO approved solar glasses. Nobody did. All around Clementine her fellow Londoners were already looking up, then down, then rubbing their watery eyes before looking back up again and cursing.
The light kept dimming into a sort of quicksilver gloam. Gloam. That was one of her daddy’s favorite words. A six-pack of Busch Light in one hand, his truck keys in the other, Rayburn Baldwin liked to say, “I’m setting sail into the gloam, kiddo. Be back before supper.” Which just meant he was going backroading up Highway 64, hoping to make it to the Overlook Rest Stop in time to watch the day’s last light go sparkling across Lake Dardanelle.
Same way it was doing now, except it wasn’t even 2 in the afternoon and the lake was hidden behind a curtain of loblolly pines. Still, an eerie metallic sheen had seeped out over everything. The crescent was gone. All the light in the sky had condensed down to a singular, spectacular thing known as totality.
Clementine had done her homework. Hours of online research, which was how she knew it was safe to look up now. No filters needed. The moon had completely covered the solar disc.
Head back, eyes up, an actress in a movie in the rain, Clementine stepped out from under the canopy and said, “Cloke?” then reached back for him, or meant to, but what she saw in the sky erased her thoughts completely. Gone were the facts she’d learned about the chromosphere because it was right there, red prominences in various flame shapes, like a portal to another dimension. One where the four minutes and twelve seconds of projected totality warped and bent back into forever.
Clementine saw the blackness of the moon encircled by the corona’s gossamer glow with her heart, her mind, her entire being. She saw the people around her in a different light now, too. What did they see? Could they see anything at all? Or were they blinded, confused, like the ancient Greeks, who believed the eclipse meant the sun would soon abandon the Earth, or the Chippewas, who shot flaming arrows at the sky to rekindle its celestial fire? Or even like Clementine Baldwin, the daughter of a mussel diver (which was illegal in Arkansas, even back then) who somehow saw herself as different — better, maybe — than the people she’d grown up with? More educated, at least. Aware of the world, the other London. Over the last few years, Clementine had come to hate them enough to make a mockery of their misguided and, yes, oftentimes dangerous beliefs. For the last couple months, she’d made a living plumbing the depths of their ignorance. The racket she and Cloke had been running wasn’t all that different from her daddy’s illicit mussel enterprise. Clementine understood that now. She’d found the answer in this strange place between the light and the dark, a liminal space Rayburn Baldwin had once called “the gloam.”
A bright flare sparked in the sky as one edge of the sun slid out from behind the moon like a parting kiss, a silent goodbye that marked the end of totality.
A new song was playing from Cloke’s speaker now, “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler. The power ballad reached its crescendo as Clementine lowered her gaze, noticing the horizon line cast in creamy shades of soft yellow and burnt orange. In the east, a plume of white rose from the nuclear plant’s cooling tower. Clementine watched the water vapor dissipate and mix with the iridescent clouds. She whispered her boyfriend’s name, fearful her voice might shatter the strange new world that had been birthed in the darkness.
When Clementine turned back to the canopy, she saw it had changed as well. The hats, the T-shirts, the bumper stickers, even her father’s shotgun in the hard case — it was all there, but the money was gone, and so was Cloke O’Neil.
Lauren Puchowski
***
The money was stuffed deep in the belly of a Trump tote bag. Cloke clamped it tight against his chest as he ran; that damn Bonnie Tyler song still stuck in his head, one line in particular, something about a powder keg.
But look, everything was fine. Cloke’s plan had worked. It was so simple he was surprised nobody else had thought of it. Maybe they had. Maybe there were similar crimes being committed all across the country, or at least in regions fortunate enough to be in the “path of totality.” With everybody and their dog staring up at the sky for four straight minutes, robberies were inevitable.
Cloke had put his own spin on this job. He’d upped the ante, so to speak. It was one thing to go around picking people’s pockets in the dark. A quick way to make a couple hundred bucks. Sure. It was an even better thing to have them fork over their cash beforehand. All it had taken was a shotgun raffle and the promise of a hefty donation to the Black Jack Baptist Church.
Maybe Arkansas’s not so bad after all, Cloke thought and ducked behind a line of late-model Fords with matte-black brush guards and tires taller than Clementine’s Prius.
The hybrid vehicle was parked in the back of the makeshift lot, right where Cloke had left it. Clementine, bless her heart, hadn’t asked any questions. It wasn’t unusual for them to park the Prius as far away from the canopy as possible. A hybrid at a Trump rally was hard to defend. Which was why Cloke had covered the Prius’s back bumper with what appeared to be MAGA stickers but were really just magnets he peeled off after each event.
Cloke glanced at the magnet above the muffler — Global Warming Is Caused By The Sun — then popped open the driver side door and ducked in behind the wheel. As irksome as the Prius had been over the last few months, it was crucial to his stealthy escape today. He pressed the red button on the dash and smirked as the engine hummed to life, a sound no louder than a small cat purring. Now all he had to do was take the short gravel road that led to Highway 64, then hit I-40 eastbound, and he’d be in Little Rock, boarding the Delta Airlines flight he’d booked the week before.
But what about Clementine? What would those toothless degenerates do to Clem when they realized her boyfriend — and all their money — was gone?
Right foot on the pedal, Cloke toed the gas, trying not to think about it. That was the secret, the one thing he knew for sure after taking 32 trips around the sun. Life was best when viewed at a slant, slightly out of focus, just enough to blur the dirty details, all the unsolvable problems that plagued the world: war, nuclear war, climate change, artificial intelligence and generational poverty. There were no answers to such threats, no right or wrong, no liberal or conservative. There was just Cloke O’Neil crouched behind the wheel of his girlfriend’s Prius, alone again, like he’d been since his mother got transferred to Fort Bragg and little Clokey had to leave all his first-grade friends behind at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.
The scene at the end of the gravel road looked like something from a military base: a convoy of cars jumbled together in both lanes of Highway 64. The traffic jam went as far back as the next bend, probably farther, but that was as much as Cloke could see. Some of the drivers had exited their vehicles and were still staring up at the sky.
Cloke slapped the Prius’s wheel, wishing it was a truck, or better yet, a plane, like the one that was waiting for him at the Clinton National Airport. Something that would get him out of there, quick.
He wasn’t going anywhere now. Not until the traffic cleared. What were all those people looking at, anyway? Wasn’t the eclipse over already? Cloke could still hear Bonnie Tyler singing in his head, telling him to turn around. Instead, he checked his rearview mirror and saw Clementine Baldwin walking down the gravel road balancing her daddy’s shotgun on her right shoulder, one hand cupped under the butt.
Cloke looked past her to the rise in the gravel road, remembering Black Jack Baptist Church and its mangy congregation. He waited, fully expecting to see a mob crest the hill brandishing pitchforks and flaming torches. No, Cloke, thought. Those people carried guns.
Lauren Puchowski
Just like the one Clementine was toting now, close enough Cloke could hear her combat boots crunching in the gravel. The way her head was cocked, Cloke thought she was staring him down, giving him the evil eye, pissed like he’d never seen her before. A few more steps, and he realized she wasn’t looking at him at all.
Cloke said, “Clem?” and slid out of the Prius. She stopped but didn’t turn, still staring off into the distance. “Listen, babe, I can explain.”
Clementine’s head moved. A nod or a shake? Cloke couldn’t tell. He was eyeing the shotgun, the tiny metal bead at the far end of the barrel, when she said, “I talked to them.”
“You what? Who?”
She said, “Them,” and nodded, definitely a nod, motioning with her head to that little bump in the gravel road, beyond it. “I told them everything.”
“What …” Cloke said and swallowed. “What, exactly, did you tell them, Clementine?”
“The truth.”
“Jesus. The tru—”
“I told them about what I saw. They saw it too, I think.”
“They saw me take the money? That’s what you’re saying?”
When she turned, her tank top’s loud lettering didn’t match her voice at all. “My daddy,” she whispered, “he taught me how to shoot this gun. Took me out in the backyard when I was 9, maybe 10 years old, not much taller than the gun itself, and he taught me all about this old thing. Stuff I’d almost forgotten. Like how to clean the barrel to keep it from losing its bluing.”
“What?”
“Daddy swore he could look down the muzzle and tell if a gun was loaded. Said he could see the folded-up end of the plastic casing. Said it looked like a belly button.”
Cloke said, “Come on, Clem,” and laughed, eyes ticking to the still-stalled motorists, chins up, mouths open, wearing their solar glasses now. Cloke laughed again, remembering this black-and-white photograph he’d seen of the first 3D movie screening at the Paramount Theater back in 1952.
When he turned to Clementine, she said, “What do you think, Cloke? Does it look like a belly button?” talking out one side of her mouth, the side that wasn’t pressed up against the shotgun’s wooden stock.
It looked like his girlfriend — former girlfriend — was holding him at gunpoint. Beyond that, Cloke couldn’t see shit, the space inside the shotgun’s twin barrels dark and round like two tiny lunar discs.
“You’re not gonna shoot me, Clementine.”
She said, “I might,” in a way that chilled Cloke’s blood.
He raised the Trump tote bag. “You want the money? That’s what this is about?”
Clementine moved her head, side to side, without moving the gun an inch. “I want you to give it back.”
“Give it—”
***
“—back. Yeah.” Clementine said, “They’re waiting for you, Cloke,” even though they weren’t, not like she’d explained it, anyway.
Nobody at Black Jack Baptist had noticed when Clementine Baldwin took her daddy’s shotgun from its polymer case and walked away from the canopy. Nobody had seen her, of that much she was certain. They might not even see Cloke when he waltzed back up there. It had something to do with photoreceptor cells and solar radiation. That’s what Clementine had read online. Maybe they’d regain their vision by the time Cloke brought back the money he’d promised to give the church.
Maybe not.
There was no way to know for sure. No one to ask. No one to tell. That’s how everything felt now. How Cloke must’ve felt when he huffed and turned before starting up the gravel road. Clementine watched him go, that tote bag slung over one shoulder. She wondered what the Londoners would do when he got there? What would Cloke say?
That’s what Clementine had hoped in the wake of the eclipse. She’d wanted to bring both sides together, let them talk everything out. Maybe they’d forgive Cloke and divvy up the money, give $20 bills back to everybody whose name was in that box.
Probably not.
Clementine lifted the gun and peered into its barrels, thinking of what she’d told Cloke O’Neil, that line about a belly button her father had told her, realizing he was full of shit. Just like his daughter and her boyfriend. Just like anyone who refused to follow simple safety precautions and stared straight into the sun. Couldn’t those people feel the heat, their retinas burning?
In the distance, Cloke’s silhouette dipped over the rise in the road and was gone, the same way the eclipse had ended without warning. Clementine sat the shotgun in the Prius’s passenger seat, remembering the moment the sun had reemerged, that silent, shimmering goodbye kiss.
She turned and started walking down Highway 64, the same road her daddy used to cruise before suppertime, setting sail into the gloam. She missed him, the same way she missed whatever it was she’d felt during those four minutes and twelve seconds when everything had sort of made sense.
It’d be years, decades before another total eclipse. Clementine knew this, but she kept walking along the highway’s narrow shoulder as the cars around her started once again. It wouldn’t be the same, but if she just kept going, she might could make it to the lake by sundown, and maybe that would be enough.
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