smoking?”
“Since all this crap with Daddy.”
“Since you took up with Kerry Rucker, I bet.”
“I smoked before with Pam. Kerry won’t smoke weed.”
They passed the joint between them, delicately pinching the burning paper. The truck cab fogged. Shannon drew in hard on the roach, and then blew out a thick puff. “I told him we needed money when I went out there to the whore’s house the other day.” Shannon dragged the word whore out imitating their mother. “But he didn’t care. All he did was offer me a couple of twenties.”
“I hope you shoved them down his throat.”
“I threw them on the ground.”
“I might drive right on out to that bitch’s house and kick his ass just for the satisfaction.”
“Ha. I’d like to see that.”
“You don’t think I could?”
“Sure you could. He’d hunker down like he always does.”
“She still thinks he’s coming back, you know.”
“I figured that.”
“Mom’ll never admit how bad things are. She’ll just send us skipping on down to The Brown Jersey to get a milkshake.”
“We’re going to have to figure out things on our own. I need money for a prom dress and shoes.”
“You think Mom’s going to let you go to prom with Kerry Rucker?”
“Why not? I’ll be fifteen, and besides, she already knows.”
Shannon plucked a photograph from the jumble on the dashboard. It was a shot from football homecoming of Will and his girlfriend, Liz.
“I love this photo,” Shannon said. “I liked your hair like that, but I’m glad you stopped trying to grow a mustache.”
“It looked good on me.”
“It looked weird. I bet Liz’s dress was expensive, probably from a Lexington department store.” She didn’t say what they both knew, that his suit had been ordered from the Sears catalog. “Maybe I can borrow a dress from her for Junior Miss.”
“I can’t believe you want to be in that priss parade.”
“Don’t laugh. You can win big money. I have a 4.0 and good volunteer work at the library. I was a candy striper, too.”
“That was two years ago.”
“So? I guess I better start practicing the Moonlight Sonata.”
“Not that again. Over and over and over. You drive me insane.”
“Shut up. You think Liz’ll help me?”
“Sure. She’s good at prissing around. You want any more of this?” Will held a brown bit of the joint between his fingernails. Shannon shook her head no. He took a couple of quick tokes, then flicked it out the window.
“Look,” he said. “I’ll get you the money for your Junior Miss stuff.”
“How?”
“I’ll get a job. My grades don’t count much now that school’s almost out. Baseball’s the only thing that’ll get me any money for school anyway.”
“Thanks, but you’re not responsible for me.”
“Somebody’s got to be. You can’t take care of yourself.”
Shannon punched him in the arm. “I could find a job. I could flip burgers or something.”
“Yeah, old lover boy’ll be hanging out at The Brown Jersey, eating onion rings and getting fat.”
A truck came up behind them and inched past on the bridge. Will raised his hand and the farmer waved back. They silently watched the other truck bump along the road out of sight.
“You keeping your legs together?”
“Will, don’t ask me stuff like that.”
“I’m telling you not to do it with him.”
“I’m not!”
“But if you do…”
“I told you I’m not.”
“There’s always rubbers in my lockbox there.”
Shannon opened the glove compartment’s tiny door. “Gee, you must have every kind made.”
“Liz steals them from her dad’s drugstore. We always have lots. You can take some.”
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
“Don’t trust a guy to take care of that or you’ll end up getting married like everybody else around here.”
“Don’t worry. That’s not in the plan.”
“Liz’s already hinting about looking at rings. Her parents would shit.”
“I was surprised when they let her date you.”
Will raised his eyebrows. “Thanks a lot.”
“Well, I was.”
“She wants me to ask her, but man, if I had a free ride like she has…She’ll go off and meet some college boy and it’ll be see ya later sucker.”
“She loves you.”
“Wake up, Shannon. I’ll be lucky to be over to the community college.” He shook a cigarette from a pack on the dash and lit it. “The factory’s coming to give their dexterity test on Monday. Time to put the round peg in the square hole.”
“Don’t even take it. Just refuse. We said we’d never work there.”
“I may not have a choice.”
A hawk circled above a field, scanning for small movement. Cows grazed, fat and oblivious to the stoned kids in the truck. A couple of the animals teetered down to their worn spot at the creek’s edge. Their legs sank deep into the thick, pockmarked muck.
“Yesterday, I heard somebody in the lunchroom saying not to do good on the test or the factory would give you a hard job. Isn’t that stupid?” Shannon said.
“Not everybody’s as smart as you.”
“I’m not that smart.”
“You are for around here.”
4
Virginia tugged her quilt tighter and hunched down in the rocking chair. The wedding ring quilt was her favorite gift, the last one her grandmother made before the old woman’s eyesight went. This morning, leaden clouds smudged the hilltops behind her house. She had called in sick, told her floor lady that her head hurt and she had a fever. Virginia couldn’t afford to miss work. She made money off the number of bundles she sewed, but her production would have been off anyway. This was something Virginia never did, take time for herself. There was always something to do, always someone to do for—a house to run, kids to raise, a job to deal with.
Patsy had taken the Chevy to the revival, which thankfully went all day. The kids were at school. Even the dog ran off into the field behind the house in search of someone else to bother. Virginia crumpled the empty pack of smokes absentmindedly. Smoke flowed from her lips, rose lazily sideways, and in an instant was sucked through the porch’s screen and vanished into steady rain.
A bobwhite called. Not the two quick questioning notes they were known for, but a sweet, melancholy gathering call that beckoned their lost family members back to the covey. Old-timers believed that you could foretell rain from a quail’s call. Virginia had always dismissed it, but recently she found there were a lot of things she had been wrong about. Who would have ever thought that Roger would have taken