Peaches (5 page)

This look encouraged Birdie to be bolder. “Daddy, I think you should renew the insurance. You can’t be too careful.”

“It’ll be a miracle if we can afford to keep up what we have this summer.”

Birdie swallowed. The farm’s financial situation had been bad for the last few years, but usually her dad tried to keep it quiet, as though neither of them noticed. Last year, to pay their taxes, Walter had sold two of their tractors and a vacant plot of land he’d bought several years ago, hoping to plant it. They’d hardly exchanged more than two words about it.

“But if something happened to—”

“Birdie, you’re just like your mother. If we had the money, I’d insure everything. Christ, we could insure the dogs. The porch. The rocking chairs.”

Birdie stared down at her fork.

“If this frost comes, they’ll be tearing up the floorboards from right under us. I wouldn’t worry about tornados.”

Birdie’s stomach rolled over. “There’s a frost coming?”

Walter didn’t bother to reply. He just kept chewing in silence. Which nearly drove Birdie over the edge. Peach trees were most vulnerable when they had their buds out, and watching over them those weeks was almost like watching the delicate, early stages of a pregnancy. But she also knew her dad thought that he had some innate sense of the weather and that he often spoke about weather patterns before anything was predicted. He kept track of cold fronts in Canada like some people kept track of the stock market.

Birdie looked at Poopie. “When are they saying it might hit?”

“They’re not,” Poopie said. “Your
father
is saying the end of next week.”

Birdie calculated. Thinning would be wrapping up then.

“No sense worrying over something that may not happen,” Poopie said.

“You’re right,” Birdie muttered back. But her dad was good at what he did. He never spoke idly. The Darlingtons had field heaters they had bought years ago for the threat of late frost, but most of them were broken or too decrepit to do much good. Birdie had read about farmers setting fires to keep their trees warm, fighting a losing battle against Mother Nature. The universe wouldn’t be that cruel, would it?

“Um, this steak’s really good,” Leeda offered. Birdie had always noticed the Cawley-Smiths liked to pretend nothing was wrong, ever.

Poopie looked at her and sighed. “But you haven’t touched hardly a bite.”

“Oh, you know, I’m not into A1 sauce,” Leeda said. “And I’m becoming vegetarian. Well, I’m trying to stop eating meat when
it’s rare.” Birdie looked down at her own bloody steak. She too had lost her appetite.

“What are you up to for the summer, Leeda?” Poopie asked.

“Well, hanging out with my friends. We’ll go on some trips, probably.” Leeda tucked a tiny forkful of green beans between her lips.

“Birdie, why don’t you make friends like Leeda does?” Walter asked.

Birdie looked at Leeda again, mortified. “Dad, I have friends.” She didn’t add they were Honey Babe and Majestic and Poopie.

“Five calls to your mother a day doesn’t count as socializing.”

Birdie put her fork down. “We don’t talk five times a day.”

Walter eyed her. “I know she complains about me.”

Birdie swallowed. She didn’t have the heart to tell him that complaints from her mother were nothing new. Cynthia had been complaining to her for years.

“Walter, a girl as pretty as Leeda has got friends beating down her door,” Poopie interjected, as though this was a better direction to steer the conversation.

Birdie scowled. Was that supposed to be defending her? Birdie stood up from the table and began clearing plates.

“Poopie, I’ll help you wash up.”

“You go for a nice walk with your cousin,” Poopie said, rubbing Birdie’s back and squeezing her shoulder. “I need you to pick some early bloomers for me to put in the vases.” With little movements Poopie could usually tell Birdie all sorts of things, but Birdie wasn’t quite sure what this one was supposed to mean. Was it, “I’m sorry you’re so unattractive”? or, “I agree that your dad is a grumpy aloof shell of his former self”?

Birdie gave Poopie one of her famous grimace smiles and trailed after Leeda onto the porch, then down to the grass and along the driveway. The fields were empty since most of the workers had quit for dinner. The dogs tapped out after them. Birdie eyed her cousin sideways from time to time. It was true. Leeda was pretty enough to knock down doors. And it kind of made it hard not to want to be friends with her. But she was also kind of cold and uptight. Birdie couldn’t imagine living her life all buttoned up the way Leeda’s was. But for the moment she looked at Leeda with envy. Birdie felt the weight of the orchard’s problems like a pile of stones on her chest sometimes, and now was one of those times. Leeda didn’t have to worry about anything like that.

Birdie fiddled with the braid in her hair, taking comfort in the cool cotton of her filmy white shirt and the hemp capris her mom had bought her at Squash Blossom in Atlanta. The orchard spread out beyond the porch, looking as bright green and healthy as it ever had. But with its trees so small and so exposed, it was hard to ignore that it was also delicate. And that was what scared Birdie the most.

“Whadda you want to do?” Leeda asked, peering at the scenery beyond the porch with a crinkle at the bridge of her nose.

“We could go to Smoaky Lake,” Birdie suggested.

“Um.” Leeda’s nose crinkle deepened. “How about sitting in the AC and watching a movie?”

The rare sound of a car pulling up the drive made the dogs perk up their huge butterfly ears. A few moments later a rusted-out white El Camino came chugging around the bend, blaring twangy, peppy Latin music and leaving a stream of gray exhaust in its wake. Several people came to the front of the dorms to see
what all the noise was about. The engine cut out, and then Enrico emerged from the driver’s side, running his hands along the top of the door and then shutting it.

Several workers converged on the car. A couple of the women climbed in. Enrico looked slightly embarrassed. He tucked his hands into the pockets of his gray shorts and started talking to a couple of his friends. He stood a full head taller than all the guys around him.

In the crowd one of the women noticed Birdie up on the porch and walked over, grabbing her hand.

“Come on, Pajarita.”
Small bird.

“Oh nooooo.” Birdie pulled back, planting her feet, but Raeka overcame her, and Birdie went trailing along behind her, followed by Leeda.

Raeka pulled her right up to the car, and when she pulled away, Raeka let her go at the same instant, and she went stumbling back into one of Enrico’s friends.

“Sorry,” she said, looking at him, then meeting eyes with Enrico. “Um.” She looked over her shoulder. “Nice car.”

“Oh.” Enrico laughed under his breath. He looked from her to Leeda, and Birdie waited for him to take Leeda in the way guys did, like she was something the heavens had just spat out like a miracle. But his eyes drifted back to Birdie’s immediately. “Thanks, Birdie. It is…not that nice. But…uh.” He tapped his head, looking embarrassed. “Cheap. My English.” He shrugged.

Birdie’s lips and fingers and toes tingled. She was pleased and horrified that Enrico even remembered her name, though being the boss’s daughter, she was hard to miss.

“How much did you pay for it?” Murphy McGowen emerged
from the crowd, sidling up beside Birdie and sizing up the car with her sharp green eyes.

“Seven hundred fifty.” Enrico smiled.

“Way too much,” Murphy said.

Enrico’s smile dropped slightly; now he was unsure. “Really?”

Murphy ducked into the driver’s side, looked at the dash, and ducked out again. “It’s got over 200,000 miles on it. I wouldn’t have paid over three. And by the sound of it it’s not going to last you very long.”

Enrico stared at her earnestly and thoughtfully. He clearly hadn’t followed all that Murphy had said, but he seemed to have gotten the gist. Instead of acting defensive, though, he nodded good-naturedly, taking the information in. Then he looked at Birdie.

“You think I have bought a piece of lemon?”

“No, I…I think it’s great.” Birdie shot a look at Murphy. Despite how mean she’d been to Birdie yesterday in the dorm, Birdie disliked her much more at this moment.

Murphy gave her a “what did I do?” look back and then rolled her eyes to show that if she
had
done something, she really didn’t care. Then she looked at Enrico, then back at Birdie, then at Enrico, and something in her green eyes clicked.

Enrico gazed at his car, then nodded at Murphy. “I pay too much. You are right.”

“Why don’t you two go for a ride?” Murphy suggested, looking from Enrico to Birdie and back.

Enrico shrugged, swiveling his hips toward Birdie and pulling his hands out of his pockets. “You want to go?”

“Um—well,” Birdie stammered. Immediately the picture of
her and Enrico riding down Orchard Drive together played like a movie in her head, with Birdie leaning against the window in the breeze and Enrico laying a hand gently on her leg. It sent shock waves up her actual, real leg. Birdie felt her body go ramrod straight.

“Can’t. I’ve gotta get back to the house. Work…”

“Oh.” Enrico frowned.

Birdie gave him a hard, fake smile and turned back toward the house, walking at a clip. Behind her the car engine coughed to life again. Once it had pulled away, no doubt to be parked behind the dorms, she turned to watch the workers trailing back inside. Only Murphy McGowen stood with her hands on her hips and stared after her.

Once Birdie got inside the house, the phone rang. She could see on the caller ID that it was her mom, calling for the fifth time that day. Birdie chose to screen the call.

O
ver the next couple of days Murphy steered clear of as much work as possible.

Each morning she listened to the other workers rise at dawn and hid her head under her pillow, waiting for them to go away so she could fall back asleep, trying her best to ignore the blue jay that started chirping as soon as everybody else went out. At night she was too exhausted by the little work she did do to break curfew, which was at ten. She wondered if the fresh air had too much oxygen in it.

Between the time work ended and lights-out, Murphy was free to do what she liked. But unlike the others, she wasn’t allowed to do it outside of the circle delineated by the dorms, the supply barn, and the house. She walked this circle endlessly like a caged tiger until she knew every inch of grass on the way from Camp A to Camp B to the Darlingtons’ front porch. She’d noticed the way Walter checked up on her from time to time, coming by the dorms a couple of times each evening. She looked for Rex and spotted him once or twice, but he didn’t come around the dorms, and their interactions were limited to
Murphy glimpsing him here and there and not getting glimpsed back.

On Wednesday afternoon she was meandering along her usual evening route when she noticed Poopie Pedraza placing a small statue on the railing of the porch. She knew Poopie had just been to the dump, but she didn’t make the effort to ask Poopie what it was or if that’s where she’d gotten it. The statue looked like some kind of tiny saint—it wore a red cape and had its hands pressed together in prayer. Murphy was staring at the statue and walking, and so she didn’t notice Walter Darlington until she was right in front of him.

“I was just coming to find you.” Walter was wearing a frayed straw hat with a leather loop around the front, which he tugged slowly as he spoke. “Judge Abbott called to check on your progress.” Murphy squinted up at him, her hands over her eyes, not replying. “I told him you have a couple of choices. You can start getting up on time with everyone else, or you can work the hours you miss at midday.” Walter paused, making sure his words were sinking in. “He offered to remove you to a road-cleaning crew instead.” Murphy continued to squint at him, but Walter didn’t seem bothered. “It’s your choice,” he said, and brushed on past her, his broad farmer’s back listing slightly left to right as he walked.

On Thursday morning Murphy crawled out of bed at dawn.

Through Thursday and Friday she spent most of each morning trying to look as busy as possible while doing very little. She stood in front of the farthest trees with her Walkman blaring, tugging occasionally at the peach nubs and then resting her arms. She liked to go back to the farthest trees of the row they’d
been told to do that day, where she rarely saw another worker and could turn in a 360 and feel like there was nothing but peach trees leading off the edge of the earth.

Already she felt like the edge of the earth was exactly where she’d landed. Even in the dorms, but especially in the fields, Bridgewater felt like it had to be a thousand miles away. The orchard smelled thick: Scents of mud, buds, insects, and early-blooming flowers overlapped one another. Murphy had spent all her life breathing the aroma of fry grease and parking lot weeds. Squirrels darted up and down the trees, and rabbits and the occasional groundhog watched Murphy work, reminding her that the orchard was the world to them, that they’d never seen Taco Bell and would never be roadkill. It was actually comforting. It was still earth, but without the crap.

Occasionally she’d get a glimpse of one of the other workers down a row, peeping out and disappearing. She paid special attention to glimpses of Leeda, who did her own brand of shirking by picking one hard peach at a time, rolling it around in her fingers gingerly as if it were an exotic jewel, and then gently dropping it to the ground. Murphy watched her curiously, wondering why she looked so tired every day, a little bitter that Leeda was able to do her shirking so openly. Under their feet the piles of hard, raw peaches grew so that you could hardly step without your foot rolling on one. By Friday, Murphy felt her feet rolling in her sleep.

That night, like every night so far, the workers gathered in a group around the barbecue, talking and laughing. Getting up from her third nap of the day, Murphy tugged a pair of cords over her hips and went down to join them.

The air was slightly chilly, and Murphy walked up to the grill, placing her hands palm out. Everyone was still sitting around staring at the fire, talking. Emma and the other women made a place for her, albeit a little less enthusiastically than they had the first couple of days. Murphy could glean a little bit of Spanish since she was taking Advanced French and some of the words were similar. But she was mostly lost. She sat for a while, listening to the buzz of the radio drifting from the windows of the men’s dorm and the buzz of voices. Every few minutes someone made an effort to include her, explaining the current topic in a few words of broken English.

“We are talking about the frost,” one woman said, leaning in to her. Murphy couldn’t remember if she was Raeka or Isabel. “They say we might to get next week. Very bad for the trees.”

Murphy nodded, feeling like this might be one of the most boring conversation topics of all time. While the workers continued talking, she swiveled to look over her shoulder and saw Leeda Cawley-Smith picking her way down from the main house, where, presumably, she’d been eating dinner each night. It made no sense to Murphy that she slept down in the dorms. She did everything she could to avoid the people who lived there. Without looking at anyone, Leeda edged to the side of the dorm and disappeared inside.

After a while Murphy stood up and walked to where the light coming from Camp A met the dusk. She lit a cigarette and zipped up her hooded sweatshirt. It was just getting dark, and the crickets had started to chirp. The breeze gave Murphy a tingly feeling in her stomach. For a second it reminded her why she had liked the orchard and how she’d ended up here in the
first place. The shadows made it look inviting and cool and restful. She decided to stroll over to the supply barn.

Once she reached the barn, she picked up the phone and stared at the dial pad. She thought about calling her mom, but she couldn’t stand hearing more about Richard. They’d been on three dates in the few days Murphy had been gone. If Murphy called next week, it was more than likely he’d be out of the picture by then. So instead, she dialed Max, a hip neo-bluegrass musician she’d met at C.W.’s Smoking Lounge in Macon who was way too old for her. He was an amazing kisser.

“Max, it’s Murphy. Feel like spending some time on a farm?”

Two hours later, when everyone in the dorm had fallen asleep, Murphy was sliding out the screen door and trucking through the trees.

She could feel her heart throbbing in different spots—her wrists, her throat, her thumbs. Murphy always liked to weigh the risks of anything she was doing, but in this case she couldn’t gauge what they were. She didn’t know how vigilant the Nazi dogs were. Or what Walter would do if he caught her a second time. But that was, of course, part of the appeal. Also, zigzagging down the rows of small trees, with her feet sliding on the discarded buds, was different at night. She felt like she might run into Hansel and Gretel. Or Snow White.

“Yow.” Murphy slapped at her leg just as she reached the overgrowth that separated the farm from the tracks. A fat, juicy black fire ant clung to her ankle. She slapped it again, smushing it. “Damn.”

Murphy had a particular bitterness, and also an admiration,
for fire ants. They were like stealth fighters. They climbed up your legs on tiptoes, knowing you wouldn’t notice them, and then when one bit you, it released a pheromone that signaled them all to bite you all at once. Vindictive little suckers.

Murphy jumped back and forth on the ties of the track while she waited, challenging herself to do different tricks—jumping on tiptoe, jumping backward, jumping backward on tiptoe. She smoked another cigarette and waited another hour. It had started to drizzle in a fine mist, and still no Max. He’d probably found some party and bailed. She began the long walk back to the dorms.

As Murphy came along the front of the men’s dorm, her body relaxing, she froze. A figure backed out of the door, closing it softly, sneakily. Murphy watched it for a moment, her pulse spiking again, making sure it was who she thought it was. When she was sure, she padded forward and tapped the figure on the back. Leeda shot straight up and squealed, snapping around.

“Oh God, you scared me.”

“Shhh. What’re you doing?”

Leeda eyed her suspiciously. “What are
you
doing?”

Murphy shrugged with studied carelessness. It drove her crazy to think Leeda Cawley-Smith—of all people—had somewhere to sneak out to while she didn’t. “Just stuff,” she whispered.

Leeda nibbled her lip. “Oh.” They both stood there for a second, awkwardly. “Well, do you want to come with me? I hate walking by myself.”

Murphy thought for a moment, mentally weighing a night of being unconscious against a night hanging out with Leeda, which would probably be almost as boring. But she was wide
awake and full of energy. The thought of shutting out the night and the sounds of the orchard was depressing. “I guess.”

With their heads bowed, the girls started back across the wide, exposed area of grass, looking toward the house for any movement. Once they reached the trees, Leeda grabbed Murphy’s wrist. Murphy looked at her quizzically.

“Do you think there are rattlers?” Leeda whispered. From the purplish light still coming in through the edge of the trees, her face was shadowy but mostly visible. Her eyelashes were wide and fluttering. Murphy was pretty sure that her own eyelashes had never fluttered. Not once.

“Oh Jesus,” Murphy whispered back. The moon had popped out from behind the clouds for a moment and the bare branches of the trees cast shadows across the footpaths.

“Where are we going?”

Leeda blinked some more and started forward. “I’ll show you.”

They disappeared into the view.

The rows went on much farther than Murphy had ever gone or ever expected to go. It was several minutes before they emerged from the last stand of peach trees onto a sloped grassy hill. The grass became a wide, dark blotch at the foot of the hill, barely distinguishable from the dark lake in front of it, except that tiny plunks of water were bursting all over its surface. Murphy thought she could easily have walked by the lake and never noticed it was there. The girls stood and gazed at it. Murphy wanted to say that it was gorgeous, but she didn’t want to say it to Leeda. She had the immediate thought that nobody had ever seen this lake but the two of them.

Murphy sank down onto the grass. Leeda sat down beside her, primly pulling in her knees and tugging the hem of her robe down around her ankles. She peered beyond Murphy’s shoulder, then scanned the trees. Murphy leaned back on her elbows and sighed, pulling her hood over her already-wet head, and decided she would have to put this evening in her book of things she never thought would happen, right below being incarcerated at a peach orchard and meeting a person whose first name was Poopie.

A pounding noise behind them made them start and turn around.

“What the…”

A large dark figure came bursting out of the bushes before Murphy could get the words out. She and Leeda jumped to their feet. But before Murphy’s body could coil enough to run, the figure was across the grass and in front of them, shooting an arm around Leeda’s waist and lifting her into the air, her legs flinging up behind her at right angles.

Leeda was squealing and then laughing as her feet hit the ground. Murphy watched Leeda turn around in the guy’s hands and push him away. And then Murphy made out that it was the face of Rex looking over Leeda’s shoulder at her, or not quite at Murphy but toward her.

“What’s she doing here?”

“I asked her to come,” Leeda said, breathing hard, looking back at Murphy but also, it felt like, through her.

“Murphy, right?” Rex asked.

“Yeah. Tree nurse, right?”

He turned to Leeda, seeming not to hear Murphy. “Let’s go swimming.”

“No way, it’s not even May yet.”

“Ah.” Rex turned toward the lake, looking frustrated and restless, then back to her. “But you won’t be here in May, and you’re here now.”

Leeda had pulled her robe tight over her chest and was shaking her head. “I don’t have a bathing suit.”

“You don’t need a bathing suit, Lee.” He stripped down to his boxers. “Anyway, you’re already wet.”

Murphy felt like an idiot. A huge third-wheel idiot. She shouldn’t have come. She sank back down under a nearby tree that hung its droopy limbs out over the water and picked at the grass between her legs. She looked up at Rex under her eyelids.

He had a bad boy’s kind of body. Finely muscled, with one tattoo Murphy couldn’t quite make out just below and to the left of his collarbone. He had a body that would let him get away with things with girls.

Rex and Leeda were talking low and giggling, and Murphy could see that Rex was trying to sweet-talk Leeda into getting in the water. After a moment’s deliberation Murphy stood calmly and pulled off her T-shirt. “I’ll go swimming.” Anyone at Kuntry Kitchen, Bob’s Big Boy, or Bridgewater High School could have told them that Murphy wasn’t going to take being odd girl out lying down.

She had only a second to see Leeda’s look of surprise, her mouth curved in a perfect
O,
before Murphy dropped her shorts. She stood in her skivvies for a moment, grinning at them, waiting for Rex to do the inevitable breast gaze. But his heavy-lidded eyes moved to Leeda. Murphy waited for them to wander, but they didn’t, gleaming as if there was some kind of
joke going on that only Rex got. It made her cross her arms over her chest.

“Fine,” Leeda said, yanking off her robe or, rather, letting it waterfall off of her to reveal a perfect set of pale green satin panties and a bra. She walked up to the water, held her arms up in the air, and executed a stunningly beautiful shallow dive.