the horizon. When the miracle was over, Sissy let off a long, satisfied sigh and flung the cob across the field.
Cole watched it sail through the air and disappear into the blanket of flowers. When he turned to look at her, Sissy was wearing an expression that was so serious, his heart skipped a beat. “What?’
Her response was a broad, corn kernel–filled grin. They both exploded with laughter.
Eyes leaking and sides splitting, the two friends fell into one another with merriment. Sissy doubled over and would have ended facedown on the ground if not for Cole’s quick reaction and strong forearm.
“Grab on!”
Sissy hooked her fingers around his arm and was tugged back to safety. “Thanks.”
Her fingers were still wrapped around his forearm when the first twinkling star appeared.
The sound of an approaching wagon shattered the magic and her hand dropped away. She hopped down to the ground. “I guess I should be getting home.”
“I’ll walk ya.”
“Okay.”
Spring.
That very night, Sissy began to think about Cole in the way she had only ever thought about Mac Gosling, a colored boy she was sweet on who lived two miles away. She found that the butterflies that invaded her stomach whenever she saw Mac also took flight when her mind stumbled on Cole. And it started stumbling on Cole often, so much so that if her mind had had ankles, those ankles would have had bruises.
In Cole’s mind, Sissy suddenly became a fixture, similar to the crucifix that hung over his parents’ marriage bed. He yearned for her, and rather than trying to quell the desire, he fed it by visiting the fence and running his hands over the slab of wood where the two of them had sat.
He so desperately wanted to own something that had touched her, or that she had touched, that he spent an hour in the field hunting for the corncob. He didn’t find it, and when he went home his clothes were saturated with the scent of flowers. His father coughed his annoyance and asked Cole if he’d abandoned the baseball field for a funeral home.
Once, when Cole thought he was alone in the house, he tried to reclaim the moment by imitating the laughter Sissy had expelled on that afternoon, and his mother walked in on him in the midst of a girlishly shrill giggle. She tapped him on the shoulder, and when the startled Cole swung around, he came face to face with his mother’s perplexed gaze.
“Boy,” she calmly asked, “are you losin’ your mind?”
Cole blinked wildly. Yes, he believed he was.
Spring.
How they got away with it for as long as they did was a mystery to me. By the time they were found out, it was way past spring and weeks beyond their first awkward kiss. There had been hundreds of kisses by the time summer swaggered in, bringing with her days upon days of sweltering heat.
It was summer’s heat that drove Sissy’s father, Edgar, off the road into the sparse shade of a pecan tree. If it hadn’t been so hot and Edgar had just kept walking up the road toward home, Sissy and Cole’s affair might have gone undetected for years.
I’ll just sit here a minute and rest, Edgar told himself as he dragged the blue and white kerchief across his damp brow. Weariness crept over him and he braced his back against the bark of the tree, cocked the brim of his hat over his eyes, and soon fell fast asleep.
Further up the road, Cole was sitting in the crook of a gnarly tree limb, working the tip of his mother’s kitchen knife into the bark.
“What you doing up there?”
He looked down to find Sissy squinting at him. Tiny balls of perspiration covered her face, and when she tilted her head, the sun ignited the orbs, gracing her with an undeniable shimmer.
Cole grinned.
With the handle of the knife clenched securely between his teeth, Cole began to make his descent with the assuredness and agility of a monkey. He hit the ground with a large thud.
The lovers glanced warily around before leaning in and stealing a kiss. They crossed the road, climbed over the fence, and moved through the blanket of flowers to the bald spot of earth which had been scuffed talcumsoft by their lovemaking.
She tasted like syrup.
He tasted like his mama’s johnnycakes.
She felt like butter.
He felt like an iron poker warmed in kindling.
An earshot away Edgar woke from his nap, stretched his arms over his head, and released a great yawn. His gaze swept over the field and stopped on a cluster of swaying flowers.
That’s odd, he thought before licking his finger and testing the air to find that it was still as death. He rose to his feet and set off to investigate the phenomenon.
As Edgar moved closer, he heard laughter. He knew that laughter, playful, teasing—lovers’ laughter. He stopped walking.
Out here in the open?
He couldn’t help but smile at the couple’s brazen outrageousness.
“Well,” he muttered aloud as he turned around to leave, “I was young once too.”
His intention was to head home, but his mind kept wandering back to the flowers and the laughter.
Who are they?
It was easy to imagine their heat, their complete surrender to one another—but try as he might, he could not imagine their faces. Curiosity got the better of him and he decided to hang around a little while longer, just to see what they looked like.
He returned to the shade to wait. He couldn’t imagine that the couple would go on for much longer—not in that heat.
Cole rolled off Sissy and onto his back. His penis slumped lazily across his thigh. Sissy reached for his hand, pulled it to her mouth, and slipped his fingers between her lips. Cole began to giggle.
They lay there in that field as if it were their own home and the ground beneath them their bed.
“I gotta go.”
“I know.” He turned onto his side and gazed deep into her eyes. “I’m already missing you,” he breathed, and then leaned in and pressed a gentle kiss against her lips. “Let’s run away together and get married.”
Sissy laughed. “Who would marry us? A white boy and his nigger mistress?” She laughed again, but this time the notes were flat.
Cole’s eyes dimmed. “You ain’t no nigger. I hate that word.”
“Come on,” she said brightly, “help me up.”
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