Nothing Moves the Moon

The customs men shake their heads and watch the women enter Mexico. Three with skirts, white socks, one with jeans and proper blouse. Seventeen, eighteen just out of Concord Academy in a black Packard Super Clipper, not quite as big as a hearse. They buy silver jewelry from the women and beers and tamales from a man. Night comes, they watch the moon large over the Pacific. They lay under the Packard on blankets, staring at it while a whitehaired man swats away with a broom handle two stumbling young men who get too close to them. What happened, Mom? We asked her about then- The summer of 1949. Did you meet a boy there? No, nothing happened, she said. Nothing happened. We went there and came back. It was the lull in between, everything happening. And then- Everything happening. I see it now, my mother, the girls, the moon reflected in their eyes, the smooth Pacific, a guitar, a song in the air. Their moments run through me, each one, as though I had never been born.