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I’m writing from the shadow of a total eclipse.
By the time this column runs, we’ll be weeks away from totality, but I won’t soon forget those four minutes and eleven seconds when the moon slipped in front of the sun.
I was on the water when it happened, aboard “Spooner” the pontoon boat with my wife, kids, and two neighborhood boys. We were drifting down the Arkansas River channel, a few hundred yards out from the Lake Dardanelle State Park. The people lining the banks were packed in tight. Somewhere, someone was pounding a drum.
The beat started slow but grew faster as the sky dimmed. The seagulls took notice, squawking and swirling like they do at dusk. Through the darkened lenses of my eclipse glasses, I watched what was left of the sun, the crescent nothing more than a smoldering rim.
The drum pounded on.
The beat matched my thumping heart, rising as that fuse of curled light crackled behind the moon. I don’t know how the drummer did it. An eclipse app, maybe? Somehow, he timed his final down beat with the start of totality, that moment when the sky sparked and a strange new dark settled in.
The crowd on the bank went crazy like the seagulls still chattering overhead. I didn’t hear them as much as I felt them. Every cell in my body was attuned to the moment.
The experience was otherworldly.
That’s the best word I can come up with to explain the metallic sheen that seeped out over the lake’s glassy surface. There was no wind. No sounds now, either. The birds and the star gazers had finally gone silent, transfixed by the sun and the moon’s celestial dance, a slow waltz that moved something deep inside me.
I was so moved, in fact, that I decided to get the family together for a picture. I wanted to capture the moment forever. I wanted to save it. We still had four full minutes. Plenty of time to snap a simple selfie.
Plenty of time, that is, when four-year-old boys aren’t involved.
As I tried to corral my son, my daughter, who’s seven, chided me: “No phones, Dad!”
As proud as I was of my Luddite daughter, I took no heed of her counsel, forging ahead with what would be an out-of-focus, poorly framed family photo. When we were done, one of the neighbor boys announced, “Only sixteen more seconds of totality!”
Wait… What? Where had those four minutes gone?
There was no rewind button. No way to get those minutes back. So, I stared up at the sun and the moon, light and dark finally together—always together—sending a message to us all.
For me, life’s answers have always been found in the gray zones, the spaces between black and white, “right” and “wrong.” Everything, as Brother Albert famously said, is relative.
On another planet, those final fifteen seconds could’ve spanned a lifetime, but for those aboard the Spooner (me, especially), the eclipse was over much too soon.
The sky flashed again and the sun reappeared, overpowering the moon like always. No one spoke, not even the kids. Nobody reached for their glasses. It was still cool and dark out. We watched the light sweep across the hills in the west, burning the shadows away, and then we started home.
PS: Reminder that bestselling author Juliet Grames will be at Arkansas Tech Tuesday, April 23rd for a reading and discussion. Event starts at 6 PM at the Ross Pendergraft Library. Book signing to follow.
| Books authored by Eli Cranor |
Broiler
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The troubles of two desperate families—one white, one Mexican American—converge rest in the ruthless underworld of an Arkansas chicken processing plant in this new thriller from the award-winning author of DON’T KNOW TOUGH.
Gabriela Menchaca and Edwin Saucedo are hardworking, undocumented employees at the Detmer Foods chicken plant in Springdale, Arkansas, just a stone’s throw away from the trailer park where they’ve lived together for seven years. While dealing with personal tragedies of their own, the young couple endures the brutal, dehumanizing conditions at the plant in exchange for barebones pay.
When the plant manager, Luke Jackson, fires Edwin to set an example for the rest of the workers—and to show the higher-ups that he’s ready for a major promotion—Edwin is determined to get revenge on Luke and his wife, Mimi, a new mother who stays at home with her six-month-old son. Edwin’s impulsive action sets in motion a devastating chain of events that illuminates the deeply entrenched power dynamics between those who revel at the top and those who toil at the bottom.
From the nationally bestselling and Edgar Award–winning author of Don’t Know Tough and Ozark Dogs comes another edge-of-your-seat noir thriller that exposes the dark, bloody heart of life on the margins in the American South and the bleak underside of a bygone American Dream. |
Don't Know Tough
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In Denton, Arkansas, the fate of the high school football team rests on the shoulders of Billy Lowe, a volatile but talented running back. Billy comes from an extremely troubled home: a trailer park where he is terrorized by his mother’s abusive boyfriend. Billy takes out his anger on the field, but when his savagery crosses a line, he faces suspension.
Without Billy Lowe, the Denton Pirates can kiss their playoff bid goodbye. But the head coach, Trent Powers, who just moved from California with his wife and two children for this job, has more than just his paycheck riding on Billy’s bad behavior. As a born-again Christian, Trent feels a divine calling to save Billy—save him from his circumstances, and save his soul.
Then Billy’s abuser is found murdered in the Lowe family trailer, and all evidence points toward Billy. Now nothing can stop an explosive chain of violence that could tear the whole town apart on the eve of the playoffs. |
Ozark Dogs
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In this Southern thriller, two families grapple with the aftermath of a murder in their small Arkansas town.
After his son is convicted of capital murder, Vietnam War veteran Jeremiah Fitzjurls takes over the care of his granddaughter, Joanna, raising her with as much warmth as can be found in an Ozark junkyard outfitted to be an armory. He teaches her how to shoot and fight, but there is not enough training in the world to protect her when the dreaded Ledfords, notorious meth dealers and fanatical white supremacists, come to collect on Joanna as payment for a long-overdue blood debt.
Headed by rancorous patriarch Bunn and smooth-talking, erudite Evail, the Ledfords have never forgotten what the Fitzjurls family did to them, and they will not be satisfied until they have taken an eye for an eye. As they seek revenge, and as Jeremiah desperately searches for his granddaughter, their narratives collide in this immersive story about family and how far some will go to honor, defend—or in some cases, destroy it. |
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