Yellow Mesquite

Chapter 1

—Separation, Texas—

Horny Toad

THE CROPS DIED in the fields and the men hauled water for the cattle and with flamethrowers singed the stickers off prickly pears to feed them, saying: We sure could use a rain, which was what they always said, and it hadn’t rained yet, at least not to amount to anything that Harley could remember, not in the twelve years since he was born in a little house over by the cotton gin that by now had been torn down—both the house and gin—so there was only the field. The houses they lived in were always old and his family was always moving, one to another.

He sat now on the back step of a house they had been in two years, making drawings of a horny toad he had caught up in a John Ruskin cigar box. A windmill and a lone chinaberry tree stood motionless between the back of the house and the field. Out along the fencerow, cowsheds and farm machinery wrinkled in the heat, shimmying as if in time to the gritty music of a jillion locusts. Beyond the barbed-wire fence, a long field of drought-withered sorghum lay flat to the horizon, where it dissolved into a mirage. He had tried to draw the mirage, a trembling lake between earth and sky. He wondered if, in a land of drought, a mirage might be a punishment.

The horny toad was the size of his hand, dark brown spots ringed with white on its spiky back, a double row of spines around either side. Thornlike horns jutted back from its blunt head, its eyes like little seeds splitting their husks. From time to time the toad scrabbled around in the box. Then it would go suddenly still, open its wide lipless mouth, throat swelling. Harley moved back when the toad puffed up like that. People said that if a horny toad spit blood in your eye you’d go blind.

He stood and shaded his eyes against the glare, seeing in the distance the Delaneys’ pickup, a brand-new 1954 Ford, trailing a boil of dust out of the mirage. He couldn’t help but grin, thinking Darlene might be in the cab. Darlene was eleven and he was in love with her—had been since two years before, when on the backside of the Delaney’s cotton field they had dropped their pants to check out each other’s privates. At the time he wasn’t quite clear on what it meant, only that the image was stuck permanently in his mind.

He shut the lid on the horny toad, then placed the box, the pencil and the razor blade for sharpening on sheets of butcher paper and left everything on the back step. He went around the house between the clothesline and the butane tank to the unfenced front yard as Mrs. Delaney brought the pickup to a stop, waiting while the dust drifted past and settled. Darlene sat in the passenger seat. She glanced at him out the side window, tossed her head, looked away.

Mrs. Delaney got out, fanning herself with a Ladies’ Home Journal. Darlene followed, looking off into the distance—Darlene, with her high cheekbones and big dark eyes, her mouth puckered and turned down at the corners.

Hey, he said, grinning.

Mrs. Delaney smiled in turn. Well, hey, yourself, Harley Jay. She had on her town dress, hair rolled tight behind her ears.

Darlene wore jeans and a T-shirt, dark hair plaited in a single rope down her back. She looked past him to the front door where his mother had appeared, a thin, muscular woman in a plain housedress, holding the screen door open.

Well, if this ain’t a nice surprise, his mother said. Y’all come on in.

Mrs. Delaney tucked the magazine under her arm. Harley followed her and Darlene up the one wooden step into the living room.

I declare, said Mrs. Delaney, ain’t this heat something? Our old house is so hot you could bake bread in it. I told Russell, ‘Russell,’ I said, ‘we gotta get us one a them wet-drip fans.’ But he’s afraid it’ll aggravate his arthritis. She gave his mother a sly grin. I told him he could sleep in the living room. Well, he didn’t take much to that, I can tell you.

August is gone off to Fort Worth right now with the last of our stockers. He says he can’t feed ’em right, he’s not gonna feed ’em no prickly pears.

Well, Russell ain’t keen on it neither, but he’s determined to hang on as long as he can.

Harley’s mother unplugged the iron and moved the board and a basket of clothes out of the way. Y’all sit over here in front of this fan. It don’t put out much, but every little bit helps.

Mrs. Delaney looked about. Where are those little girls today?

Vacation Bible school. Arlene’s gonna drop ’em off later.

Harley was glad his six-year-old twin sisters, Anna Mae and Annie Leigh, weren’t home. Now he had Darlene all to himself.

Darlene settled on the couch by her mother. Harley’s mom sat across in the matching chair. Her hands with their thick veins and blunt nails smoothed the crocheted doilies over the chair’s arms. Aside from the straight-backed chair Harley sat on, there were a couple of end tables with plastic-shaded lamps and a coffee table with a glass candy bowl that was always empty. The linoleum on the floor was worn through to the tar with scrubbing, the pine-plank flooring around the edges bleached white. A framed picture of Jesus at the Last Supper hung on the wall above the sofa. If you moved to one side, the picture shimmied and turned into a picture of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.

His mom got up and started for the kitchen. I’ll fix us some iced tea.

Vera, thanks, but I can’t stay. I gotta get on inta town for jury duty. Russell, he’s over in the field trying to pull the flywheel off that old John Deere, and Burl is off dove hunting with some boys. I didn’t want to leave Darlene by herself, so I was wondering if you might keep her for me till I get back.

Why, of course. You know that. You sure you don’t have time for a glass of tea?

Mrs. Delaney looked at her watch. I better be getting on up yonder. You know how they are about being on time.

Well, don’t you worry about Darlene. She and Harley, they get along real good. The girls, they’ll be home soon, too.

Darlene, Mrs. Delaney said, don’t you be no trouble now.

—

Harley sat with Darlene at the table in the eat-in kitchen, the two of them drinking iced tea, eating peanut butter cookies, hardly looking at each other while his mother ironed clothes in the living room before the fan.

Harley finished and put his glass in the dishpan. We’re going outside, he called to his mom.

It’s awfully hot out there.

Harley went out and held the screen door for Darlene, but she ignored him and went back into the living room with his mother. He let the door slam, then picked up the cigar box with the horny toad from the step and went out and sat on an upended bucket in the shade of the chinaberry tree alongside the windmill, one eye on the back door.

Darlene pushed it open and sauntered out toward him, head cocked aside, one hand on her hip. Whatcha got in that box?

A horny toad. I’ve been drawing ’im. You wanna see?

She made a face. Yuck. Why would you draw a ugly thing like that?

’Cause. It’s interesting.

No real artist would draw a dumb thing like that.

Real artists draw any durn thing they want to, he said, feeling a little thrill, talking back to Darlene. For good measure, he flipped the lid up and pushed the box at her, the horny toad trying to scratch out over the rim.

Darlene stumbled backward. Harley Jay Buchanan! You dumb idiot!

He laughed. What, you scared of him?

She flashed him a defiant look and at the same time her hand whipped out and snatched the horny toad from the box. She held it at arm’s length, its bowed legs clawing the air between her white knuckles.

Harley took a step back. You crazy? That toad’ll spit blood in your eye and make you blind!

Her mouth twisted down at the corners. You dumb sissy coward, she said through clenched teeth.

Gimme back that damn toad!

Try and get it! She yanked the toad in close and swung around, her back to him.

He plowed into her, locked his arms around her, and they slammed to the ground with a thumping grunt. Darlene rolled away and hunched her shoulders against him, cupping the toad in both hands between her thighs. He got one arm around her neck, then reached up between her legs from behind and tried to pry her hands loose. She jerked up stiff and he realized he was touching her privates. The image of her in the cotton field, her pants dropped, popped into his mind.

In the same moment, she turned and slapped the toad against his face. A hairline of red shot from the toad and spotted the end of his nose. Darlene stared, then wriggle-scooted back, frantically flinging that toad out into the broom weeds.

Harley stared cross-eyed at the little red splotch on his nose.

You gonna be blind… Darlene whispered, big-eyed, pale.

Carefully, he took off his shirt and wiped the spot from his nose. See, he said, voice quavering, it ain’t nothin’ about a poison toad to be scared of, not if you’re as fast as I am and can get your eyes out of the way in time.

Darlene collected herself, crossed her arms, defiant. You done ruint my brother’s shirt.

He stared at the short-sleeved seersucker shirt wadded in his hand. What…?

That’s Burl’s shirt.

As much as he liked Darlene, he disliked her older brother, Burl. Burl picked on the little kids, and once he shoved Delmer Fry down in a ditch on the edge of the school ground and Delmer couldn’t get out. Delmer was retarded and spent all his lunch money on bubble gum.

Mama give it to you ’cause Burl outgrowed it. Now you done ruint it with toad blood.

Harley stared at the shirt, then slammed it in the dirt and stomped it. He snatched it up and tried to rip it in half, jerked it first one way, then another, but it refused to tear and he slammed it down and stomped it again. He stormed over the ground, searching among the broom weeds. Where’s that dang toad!

They saw it at the same time. Darlene tried to step on it, but he shoved her with his hip, snatched it up and held it over his head.

See? he said, breathless. I ain’t scared of nothin’.

Oh, yeah? Then why don’t you stick him in your face if you’re so brave.

He took a breath and lowered the toad, face-to-face with its spiked head, its tiny eyes. The toad swelled and paddled the air with its scaly legs. Harley went weak, heart thumping in his chest—if he was blind he could never be an artist.

In the same instant, Darlene grabbed his wrist with both hands and dropped her weight on it. Gimme that toad! She yanked his hand down level with her own face and held tight, squinting against the toad’s open mouth, its neck swelling, heaving. Admit it. I’m braver than you, she said, so low and raspy he barely heard.

He grabbed her and lunged aside, and they went sprawling in the weeds. She caught his finger and bent it back. "Dang" he muttered, and let go, clutching his hand. Darlene dashed out of the weeds with the toad. She grabbed the razor blade off the butcher paper and slit a thin line down its underbelly from neck to tail. She held the toad toward him at arm’s length, its mouth gaping as it raked the air with its clawed feet.

Harley stumbled back against the windmill post.

There ain’t nothing else you can do but kill it, she whispered fiercely, and that ain’t the same. With a long, underhanded sweep, she pitched the squirming toad high in the air, end over end, some twenty feet out into the broom weeds with their thin stems and flat tops.

He stared at the spot where the horny toad had disappeared under the ground-cover.

Darlene’s gaze followed his, then back. The expression on her face changed suddenly. I don’t know what made me do that… Her eyes brimmed with tears, fingers pinching at the hem of her T-shirt.

Why don’t y’all come on in now and have a sandwich.

He spun around to see his mother holding the screen door open.

I made some nice pimiento-cheese sandwiches with pork and beans and cantaloupe. His mother blotted one temple with the back of her hand. It’s so hot out here. I don’t know why y’all don’t play in the house. Well, come on now, before the ice melts in your tea. She started back inside, but stopped. Harley Jay, where’s your shirt?

Uh, it got tore up.

Tore up? She frowned. I declare, if you ain’t the worst on clothes I ever seen. I don’t see— She was about to go on when her gaze shifted. She tilted her head. Darlene…are you crying? She stepped down into the yard and let the screen door shut behind. Hon, what’s the matter?

Darlene lowered her face, shook her head.

Tell me. What’s wrong? Are you hurt?

He…he touched me, Darlene said, hugging herself.

His mother went pale. Harley…what…what on earth is she saying?

It wasn’t on purpose, he said, barely able to breathe. See, we was wrestling over…wrestling over this toad and she had it and I was trying to get it and…and…it was a accident.

His mother’s gaze bore down on him, an expression of shocked disbelief. She looked again at Darlene. Is that true? You were wrestling? An accident?

Darlene shrugged weakly. Kinda, I guess. We was wrestling, and—

She was hiding that toad between her legs, and I was just trying to get it. And…and that’s what happened.

Darlene sniffed and wiped her eyes on the heel of one hand.

His mother stared, one to the other. I want you to listen to me. You two, you’re getting too old to be wrestling like that. See what happens? I don’t want any more of it. Do you understand me? Both of you?

It was a accident, he mumbled.

I’m not saying it was or wasn’t. I’m saying I don’t want you two playing like that anymore. You hear?

Yes, ma’am.

His mom looked them over again, each in turn. Y’all come on in now. Darlene, you stay in the house with me until your mother comes. She gave him another look, then took Darlene by the hand and gentled her up the step into the kitchen.

—

That night, long after the house was quiet and everyone was asleep, he slipped out of bed and turned the light on above the little table where he did his homework. He took the drawings of the toad out of the drawer and spread them over the tabletop. They were among the best he had ever done. He tore them into tiny pieces and fed them into his trash basket.

He had hardly gotten back into bed when he heard the old International truck pull up out front, and then his daddy entering the house—home from taking all but two milk cows to the Fort Worth stockyard.

—

Wind whined in the windowpanes, fluttering the paper shade in the first light. The windmill squealed out back, sucker rods bump-thumping against the well casing.

Harley lay still, listening to the sizzling and scraping, the clinking and clanking of his mother making breakfast, smelling the pork frying and the biscuits baking and the coffee boiling, watching her shadow flicker across the sharp slit of light under his door.

Out back, the screen door groaned and the wood door bumped open, and his daddy’s boots stomped over the sill. Then the screen slammed, the spring whanging, and the wood door jarred shut.

Harley heard their voices, low and flat, and then a chair scraped and the floor groaned, and his door burst open and the light and the suddenness jarred his senses, even against the tightness of his stomach, and his daddy said, Time to hit it, just like he always did. Not harsh but not gentle either.

Yessir, Harley said, wondering why his daddy hadn’t come at him with the belt for touching Darlene. He scrambled out of bed, pulling on his Levi’s and the stiff-ironed khaki shirt and worn-out tennis shoes. Was it possible his mother hadn’t said anything? He combed his hair back and went out through the kitchen, glancing sideways at his daddy spearing slices of tenderloin, swiping it through the red-eye gravy, snapping it off the fork.

His mother had set out plates for the twins, though they were never up this early except during the school year. She gave him a reassuring smile as he passed through. Morning, Harley Jay.

Morning. He glanced again at his daddy and went out the back door toward the barn.

Wind sighed through the broom weeds. He thought of the toad somewhere there among the weeds, the thin hairline slit in its underbelly, wondering if it was deep enough to have killed it.

He took a leak behind the barn where the two remaining cows stood flat and gray against the dawn, crunching on the bundled sorghum his daddy had thrown over earlier from the stack-lot. He thought how he might draw such flat shapes, showing what something was without detail. When he finished, he buttoned up and headed back to the house. Wind fluttered his shirt, hummed in the windmill.

In the kitchen, he poured hot water from the kettle into the enameled pan, added a little cold from the bucket and washed up for breakfast. His plate was already made with scrambled eggs, hot biscuits, red-eye gravy, and fried strips of tenderloin. His mother poured him half a cup of coffee, poured herself some and took her place.

They ate in silence, the mood subservient to that of his daddy. Harley watched him without seeming to watch, apprehensive glances, little more than a blink of an eye from a lowered face.

His daddy finished, dumped his knife and fork on his plate with a clatter, shoved his chair back and went out. The screen door slammed after him.

Harley hurried.

Don’t swallow your food whole, his mother said.

By the time he got out to the tractors, his daddy was working the lever on one of the guns, pumping grease into the little metal nipples on the disk harrow behind the Farmall Regular.

I already gassed ’em, his daddy said, not looking up from where he knelt under the Regular’s toolbar. You get that old Twelve greased.

Harley grabbed the other grease gun from off the five-gallon can and slid down under the Twelve’s toolbar. He had made many drawings of the farm machinery, always impressed by their massive power—the big buzzard-wing sweeps, the steel disks, how they tore up the earth.

His daddy finished, put his grease gun away and went up alongside the Regular, where he set the magneto, the spark and the gas. Then he went to the front, fit the crank in and gave it a sharp twist. The tractor coughed a puff of smoke out the stack. The second time it fired and died. His dad went around and set the spark back some and this time it fired right up, rattling rich and throaty, shattering the stillness of the soft tangerine light, the sun beginning to wobble up behind the long, dark horizon.

Harley sneaked a look at his daddy, saw the little light there in his eyes, and figured it was about as near to joy as he could get. That was something he would never be able to paint. But he tried to imagine it, what the light would show behind his eyes.

His daddy turned toward him. You about through there?

Yessir. Just finishing up.

Okay now. You watch that old harrow. You cut them wheels too short, that toolbar’ll catch on them old knobby tires and it’ll pick that sucker up and land it right on your back. So you watch it, hear?

Yessir.

Harley greased the last fitting on the harrow and turned to slide out from under the toolbar.

He stopped.

The horny toad dragged its great black-bloated belly through the dirt, its wide mouth gaping, watching him with its little slit eyes.

Harley stared in turn, unable to swallow. It was fifty yards back to where the horny toad had disappeared yesterday into the broom weeds.

Harley eased from under the toolbar on the opposite side, went to the fencerow and picked up a heavy rock in both hands. He brought it back, lifted it above his head with effort, and brought it down on the toad with all his strength. A muffled plop and yellow pus shot into the dirt from underneath.

His daddy turned, frowning. What’re you doing there?

Nothing.

You stop that fooling around and get that tractor moving.

Yessir.

Harley set the spark and the gas and then went around front. He stood humped over, holding to the crank. A moment passed, then he let go, went to the fencerow again and began to gag.

His daddy looked up. Hey…what’s wrong with you?

Nothing.

His daddy studied him. You sick?

No sir.

Then how come you throwing up like that?

I ain’t. I’m fine.

Another moment. Then, softer: No, you better get on back to the house. You lay down a while. Hear?

Harley shook his head, spat out the taste of bile, wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Wordless, he returned to the tractor. He took hold of the crank, gave it a sharp turn and it fired right up. He climbed up on the iron seat and knew without looking that his daddy was still watching as he shoved the clutch in, pulled the notched gas lever out two-thirds of its length, and nudged the shifter into gear between his knees.

2

Fastball

THE JULY SUN beat down, blinding off the windshields of cars and pickups parked behind the backstop at home plate. Dust kicked up from the ball field hung lazily on the heat before settling. Sweaty Separation fans meandered up and down the first-base line yelling encouragement and advice, while Blackwell fans claimed the territory behind third and home.

Seventeen-year-old Harley stood at his position just off first, watching Billy Wayne Hinchley on the mound, winding up for a pitch. Billy Wayne Hinchley was the new boy in town. He was short, his head too big for his body and his nose too big for his head even. There were pockmarks on his face and his eyes were little. Little and beady bright. His mouth was little too, and he had a way of talking out of the corner, grinning up one side until the greasy hank of hair hanging across his forehead caught in the corner, like a hook. That was Billy Wayne Hinchley, and there was no reason in the world for the girls to be acting so crazy over him.

Harley didn’t like the way Billy Wayne talked about the girls, the way he talked to them, bordering on the obscene. That in itself might whet their curiosity, regardless of their disapproval. Some of the boys thought it was funny, but in spite of his own raging hormones, he treated the girls with respect. His mother said you either looked up to people or down on them. It was all in respect. Too, he resented the way Billy Wayne had blown into town, acting right off like he was cock-of-the-walk. He supposed he was jealous, but he still didn’t see any reason the girls found Billy Wayne so interesting.

One thing Harley had to say for Billy Wayne: He could pitch a baseball. Separation scraped together a team each summer and played similar teams all the way up into the Texas Panhandle. It wasn’t just kids; grown men came in from the farms and ranches and oilfields. They were well into the season when Billy Wayne Hinchley showed up, but he tried out and damned if he couldn’t throw that ball like a pro. He could hit, too, which pitchers weren’t usually known to do. So Separation was moving up fast, from seventh to third in what was unofficially known as the Prickly Pear League.

And here they were, tied three and three with Blackwell in the bottom of the ninth, Blackwell’s Jimmy Phillips at bat, two outs and a man on second. Billy Wayne came out of his windup, the Separation crowd yelling and carrying on as Phillips took an embarrassing swing at Billy Wayne’s slider. Strike two.

Harley’s gaze wandered past the backstop, beyond the cars and pickups to the café and Travis’s general store wrinkling in the heat among a half dozen little shoe-box houses down across the school grounds on the other side of the highway. It was high time he hit that road, got off to Dallas. But then there was Darlene Delaney.

He looked aside to where she sat with three other girls in Billy Wayne’s ’55 Chevy. They drank Cokes they had brought up from the café, and fanned themselves with magazines, and now and then they’d get out and parade around in front of the cars, laughing and giggling for the benefit of whoever cared to watch—and more than one were willing to watch these girls bursting out all over, jiggling up and down the sidelines in their light summer dresses, tanned arms and legs swinging.

Things had gone well with him and Darlene for a while now. They had been to the musical at Travis’s general store two Saturday nights in a row, and Darlene had ridden to the Highland ball game with him the week before. That night he had given her a gold ankle chain with a little heart on it. That chain had cost him the last of his going-away money.

He watched as Darlene got out of the car, her full twist of a mouth turning down at the corners in a haughty smile, big slanted eyes flashing over high cheekbones. One of the girls said something to her and they all giggled. Darlene flushed and laughed and threw a magazine back through the window at them. Showing off. She tossed a glance in Harley’s direction, then went parading along behind the backstop, hips and breasts doing the damnedest things under her sleeveless cornflower-blue dress. He was pleased to see she wore the ankle chain.

He heard the crack of the bat but by the time it registered, the ball was a thin white blur whistling past his ear. His glove automatically snapped up in its wake, but that ball was long gone and Jimmy Phillips from Blackwell was pumping his knees ninety-to-nothing, coming down the first-base line with everybody yelling, and Anse, the man on second, was already rounding third, headed home. It was a fair ball just inside the base line. He could have stuck up his glove and had it without moving out of his tracks.

Frog Anderson tried to stop it in right field but it took a bad hop, jumped his glove, sank up in his jelly belly, and came spitting back out, Frog swatting at it, sucking air. It didn’t matter anyway; Anse was crossing home plate, and everybody was hooting and hollering, and that Blackwell bunch were blowing their car horns and going crazy, and by now Phillips was rounding third, headed home. Phillips had a home run on what would have been a line drive to first if Harley had been on his toes instead of daydreaming over Darlene Delaney. That was it. He had lost the game: Blackwell five, Separation three.

Billy Wayne Hinchley glared at him with his big head cocked to one side, hands on his hips as though he might like to do something about it. Willie McDonald on second slammed his glove on the ground and kicked up a cloud of dust. There was a lot of noise: You wanna sleep out there, we’ll get you a cot. Get that boy some caffeine. Gonna get killed standing around on the ball field, your face hanging out like that.

He felt himself flushing—looking like a damn fool right in front of Darlene. Pretty soon everybody quieted down, and some of the boys even thought it was funny. The Blackwell team hung around for a while, rehashing the game with the Separation boys. Most of the older men went on back to work or down to the café.

"Goddamn, you can flat throw that ball," Jimmy Phillips said to Billy Wayne.

And you can flat hit the hell out of it, too, Billy Wayne replied, a sideways glance at Harley. You just about knocked that cover plumb off.

Shit, let’s all go swimming, Frog said, rubbing the red spot on the fat under his T-shirt where the ball had popped him.

Yeah, let’s all go swimming. They began gathering up balls, gloves and bats, stuffing them in the tow sacks they hauled them around in.

Harley picked up a practice ball, slapped it in his glove and shuffled over to where Darlene stood with her three girlfriends near the bleachers. The girls were laughing, talking loud, trying to get attention without being obvious. Darlene looked at Harley and rolled her eyes. Where was your mind at, anyway, Harley Jay!

He forced a grin. Take a guess.

Billy Wayne Hinchley stepped between them, his back to Harley. Hey, y’all girls wanna go swimming with us?

They giggled and turned red, all but Darlene, and some of the boys laughed out loud because everybody knew the boys skinny-dipped. A few Blackwell boys paused nearby, looking on with slit-eyed grins.

Clara Ann, a small blond with freckles and a turned-up nose, said, "What makes you think we’d go swimming with you, anyhow?"

It might be real educational, Billy Wayne said, that grin hooked up one side of his face.

Sheew. You can’t teach me nothing, Clara Ann said. "You don’t know nothing I don’t know."

Okay, then, you be the teacher. Maybe you can show me a thing or two.

"Just what do you mean by that, Billy Wayne Hinchley?"

The girls were red and sweaty and embarrassed, but Harley could see they were tickled to death over it. All but Darlene.

C’mon and find out, Billy Wayne said.

Shoot, I wouldn’t go nowhere with you, not even to a dogfight.

Aw, Clara Ann, they don’t come any nicer’n me, Billy Wayne said.

Or bigger either, Jimmy Phillips said, and all the boys whooped and whistled.

"Just what do you mean by that crack?" Clara Ann said, but she was flushed, and she and everybody else knew what he meant. Word had gotten around from the gym showers about Billy Wayne’s big pecker. It was big even in relation to his head and nose. Harley had to admit he hadn’t seen a dong like that on anything short of old Lucifer, Uncle Jay’s stud horse.

You wanna find that out, you gotta go swimming with us, Billy Wayne said.

Darlene swelled up and stepped out in front of the other girls. You really think you’re hot stuff, don’t you.

Billy Wayne looked her over with his seedy little eyes. Try me.

Harley was about to step in when Darlene’s face screwed itself out of shape and she gave Billy Wayne a look that would wither a stove bolt. Not if you were the last ugly little dwarf on God’s green earth.

Everybody laughed. Billy Wayne laughed too, though his color was up.

Hoo-wee! somebody shouted.

Aw, c’mon, y’all, let’s go swimming.

A few boys broke away. Others hovered nearby, leering.

Billy Wayne stood in place, looking Darlene over. "You hurting bad, ain’t you."

That’s enough, Harley said sharply.

You’re a nasty little boy, Darlene said to Billy Wayne. She turned and stomped off toward her daddy’s pickup, nose in the air.

Billy Wayne slouched against his Chevy, watching Darlene walk away. He laughed a short bark of a laugh. Darlene stopped. She looked flustered for a second, then turned and came directly to Harley, her eyes flashing over his shoulder at Billy Wayne.

We still going to the musical tonight? she demanded loudly.

Harley swallowed. Sure. Why not?

"Well, who knows, you go off with that…that Prince Charming there, and who knows where y’all are gonna end up."

Not me. I’m going swimming for about ten minutes. I gotta do the milking and feeding tonight, so I’d better meet you there.

Darlene shrugged. Her gaze flicked past Harley again; then she looked back at him, quick, and all at once her mad look dissolved and she smiled as sweet a smile as he had ever seen. He thought for a second she was actually going to kiss him right there in front of everybody. Instead, she put one hand on his shoulder, cupped her other hand to his ear and whispered, Okay. I’ll meet you there. Say around seven. Then she drew back and blushed that same sweet smile on him again—as though she had just confided the grandest secret in the whole world. She turned then, chin up, and marched with a jaunty, hip-swinging show toward the other girls, who were looking on with gleeful anticipation.

"Let’s go down to the