I knew she was interested in me (though I never dreamed she would take it any further), like the day she came over to take Trinket off to her house to spend the night with her daughter Julie. That was the day Daddy was put in the hospital over in Deming—just the day before he died. We were waiting on Trinket to get her stuff together when Mrs. Collins came up to me real close by the door and wrapped her fingers around my upper arm, close enough I could smell her perfume and her sweat. I felt uneasy for her to be so close, because I’d seen the way her eyes bugged out of her head one time when she came to visit and Uncle Sean was sitting in the kitchen without a shirt on. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. That’s how she began to look at me as I got a little older.
She’s married, too, and besides her daughter Julie, she has an older daughter who’s already off somewhere going to college, or married, or working. I’ve never paid enough attention to find out. She’s not a bad looking woman, but in comparison to the way Mama dresses, which looks pretty normal to me, Mrs. Collins tries to dress like a high school girl with all her makeup and jewelry, and her short skirts and sweaters that show off her boobs underneath—only she doesn’t have all that much to show. She’s at least fifty, like Mama. If I were interested in women, I might think Mrs. Collins was kind of pretty. She’s probably got a good figure for an old woman. Better than Mama’s probably, only I’m just not interested. Besides, everybody knows she hangs out with other men at the bars when her husband Nick is off on business. He’s away a lot, though they own a ranch down the road from here, across the highway. Maybe they’re rich, though I don’t know what that means. Ranchers like the Collins and the Hills run most of the county. Anyway, Mrs. Collins has black hair right now, but I think it was blonde when Daddy died. That was only two months ago.
So yesterday, Lance and May were working in the barn. It’s coming up on harvest, and they were cleaning tools and straightening the barn for the grain we’ll store there. I headed over to Animas to contact Mr. Trujillo about hiring him this year to harvest the grain with his combine. Daddy always hired him. He thought Mr. Trujillo was a snake in the grass but said he had no choice. As it’s coming near October, it was a beautiful day. The air was nippy, but I drove with my window down, and the clean desert air felt good as it dried the sweat on my neck and in my hair. I had been up early for a Sunday and had already been working in the barn before Lance and May showed up. So I was already dirty and probably had grease on my T shirt.
But that’s just the way it is when you have to work all the time. I didn’t change clothes as I headed for Animas. Our farm is twenty miles south of Hachita, and from there it’s another thirty miles west to Animas. But I enjoyed the drive, and by the time I’d talked to Mr. Trujillo, I went over to the gin where they sell burlap sacks, because this year I’m going to sack up the grain right off the combine and not sell it to Old Man Hill like Daddy used to. Hill has a grain silo, and he buys our grain in bulk, then sacks it up and sells it out himself, and I’m hoping to cut him out, because I need to get as much as I can for the grain, since we don’t raise cotton anymore.
Anyway, Mr. Trujillo said he was sorry about Daddy, and I thanked him. Then, I said I’d come to ask him to harvest the grain. He said he would but that he was going to have to charge more with the diesel prices like they were, which is another reason I want to cut out Mr. Hill as the middleman.
So with a little time on my hands before I had to head home, I drove on over to Cotton City, about ten miles north of Animas. It’s a nice drive and I wanted to see the fields of cotton, the white fluff against the close-in Peloncillo Mountains that border the west side of the valley, and the clear blue of the sky above it. There’s something about a fall sky in the desert that hints at the peace of winter to come, and not just the end of the growing season when plants are dying. Other than summer, fall is my favorite time of the year.
So anyway, I went into the Cotton City Market and bought myself a RC Cola, which I downed in one long swallow and was just getting into my pickup when Mrs. Collins caught my upper arm, wrapping those fingers with their long red nails around it. I almost jerked my arm free, because I didn’t recognize her at first with the black hair and red cat-eye sunglasses. I noticed how fake the hair color was, especially out in the sunlight, but I told her how nice it looked.
She got this real funny look on her face. “I was wondering if you even noticed things like that,” she said, removing her sunglasses and releasing my arm, for which I was relieved. And I asked her what she meant, because I sure had no idea. I thought I was giving her a compliment and was being polite.
“Just things I’ve heard,” she said, messing with her hair, now that I’d brought it up. She looked around the parking lot as cars pulled away and others drove in, so I thought we were through talking.
“Well, nice seeing you,” I said, trying to step into the pickup.
But she moved up real close to me, and I stepped back. It wasn’t like she smelled bad with that perfume she always wears, but it reminded me of how she’d been looking at me in the last couple of years, kind of smiling with that funny look in her eyes and, always, it seemed, touching me.
“If you can wait just a minute, Will, I need to talk to you.”
I looked around at the cars churning up the dirt in the parking lot and realized that church had let out, so I knew it was getting kind of late. I would just have time to get home for lunch. And I said so.
“Come sit with me in the car a minute, Will,” she said. “Maybe you can allay my fears about something.”
I’d have to look up that word ‘allay’ though I thought I knew what it meant. But I didn’t think I ought to sit in her Caddie because of being dirty, afraid I had grease on my Levi’s. I told her, too. And that’s when she kind of laughed like she was laughing at me. “Are you nervous around girls like this all the time, Will? I think we really need to talk.”
So far, I hadn’t understood a thing she meant, and she hadn’t answered me about the dirty Levi’s. So I got in the car and shut the door because I didn’t want to get dust in it. It made me nervous just to sit on the furry, leopard-skin seats and to put my boots on the matching light tan floor mats. I noticed even the sun visors were covered in a furry material and, aside from making me feel like I was in a lion’s den, I thought the look she was going for cheapened the otherwise classy red and white colors of her new car. And it was new. I could still smell the factory odor, even below what must’ve been her perfume.
I decided I had to get out, but before I could object, she got in, started the engine, and backed out of the lot. She headed south toward Animas.
“Ma’am. I need to get my pickup and get back home. I don’t have time—”
“You’ll just have to take a little time, Will,” Mrs. Collins said, still laughing kind of mean like, though I guess that’s how older people get. They’re used to bossing their kids.
So I shut up and just waited. We drove south out of Cotton City, and a mile or so down the road, she turned right onto a farm road and drove down it about a quarter of a mile. She pulled to a stop off to the side and killed the engine.
The alfalfa field we’d parked next to was green and looked nice against the brown of the mountains and the turquoise of the sky. Butterflies flew about in the alfalfa. I fiddled with the window controls to roll my window down, but with the car off, they didn’t work, and it was stuffy and close in the Caddie. I felt trapped and was drowning in her perfume. I was nervous, too, because Mrs. Collins looked weird the way she was smiling at me with a gleam in her eyes.
“I’ve been hearing things, Will,” she finally said, looking straight ahead, both hands still on the steering wheel. “Things that make me afraid for you. Things that would just kill your mother if she heard.” Then she looked straight at me with that gleam still in her eyes, and she didn’t look the least bit afraid. “I just talked to Rick Zumwalt. He and your sister are pretty serious about each other aren’t they?”
I noticed how thic
k her lipstick was and the way it kind of caked at the edges of her mouth, and I wondered if she really thought that looked pretty.
“They’ll probably get married, Ma’am.” I was confused. I wondered if Mrs. Collins had any idea what it was she wanted to talk about. “But you said you were afraid of something and wanted me to allay your fears? Was it something Rick said? You said you talked to him?”
“This is hard for me,” Mrs. Collins said. But it didn’t look hard for her at all, because she was still grinning at me, like she was enjoying every minute of it. I was getting so nervous, I was afraid my legs were going to start shaking. I knew there was a spot of grease on my T shirt, and I was kind of sweaty and stinky, even though the day was cool. I’d been up since dawn and hadn’t bathed. And here I was sitting in Mrs. Collins’ furry, new Caddie between Animas and Cotton City and needed to be getting home for lunch. Everybody would be waiting on me if I didn’t get back soon.
“Look, Ma’am, I don’t mean to be rude, or nothing, but if you’ve got something you need to talk to me about, why don’t you come over to our house where we can sit and drink coffee?”
But she shook her head and kind of turned in the seat to face me, then laid her right arm on the back of the seat. I felt her hand hovering at the back of my neck. “You don’t understand, Will. This is something your mother should not hear. I’ve got to tell you, you’re in deep trouble, but you act like you don’t even know it.”
I was getting kind of mad, and I didn’t like the way she was acting one bit. “Whatever you think I’ve done, Ma’am, I’m sure it ain’t true. I don’t have time to get into trouble like some of the rich folks’ kids.”
Her eyes flared at that. “Then you just tell me why Rick Zumwalt thinks you’re a queer and sleeping with that orphan kid you’ve got living there. He says you and…Lance, is it?…are sharing a bed under the same roof with your mother, and your father hasn’t been dead six months.”
My breath just stopped in my chest, and I’m sure the truth of what Mrs. Collins said showed on my face, because all I could do was look her right in the eye thinking maybe I’d heard something wrong. Rick had said that? Had Rita told him? But why would she?
“I can help you, Will,” Mrs. Collins was saying. “It’s kind of a calling I have.”
This time, I knew exactly what she meant, and here I was sitting in her car where nobody was likely to come by for who knew how long.
“I don’t need help, Ma’am,” I said, knowing where this was headed. “And it ain’t none of Rick’s business what’s going on under my roof. Maybe he’s just blowing hot air.”
She laughed, sharply, and suddenly grabbed my shoulder. I could see her long, red nails out of the corner of my eye and wondered if she had ever worked a day in her life.
“I can make a man out of you, Will. I know it’s hard without your father. A boy your age…” She trailed off and ran her hand down my arm.
I was frozen in the seat, like in a dream when I know I need to run but my legs feel like wood. “Please, Mrs. Collins. This ain’t right. I really need to get home.”
But she wasn’t listening to me, and the look in her eyes had changed to a kind of daze I didn’t like. I saw the wrinkles around the edges of her eyes, which the makeup was supposed to hide. In the light of this clear fall day, I could also see red splotches on her face that weren’t there a minute ago. “What’s right is that you learn to appreciate women, Will.”
She was wearing a skirt, one like those I’d seen girls in the high school wear, called a wrap-around or something, and with her left hand, she suddenly pulled the skirt open in a movement that showed me she wasn’t wearing a thing underneath, and I got a glimpse of her pubic hair and the slit. And before I could even register what she was doing, she laid her hand on my thigh, squeezed, then grabbed my crotch.
It was just a reflex, but I knocked her hand away. Then I grabbed the door handle and flung the door open hard enough that it rocked on its hinges, and I was out of there. I didn’t bother to shut the door or look back as I hit the dirt with my boots and began running back toward the highway.
As I ran, I heard the sound of her car starting up and the angry slide of tires on gravel as she raced the engine and came barreling down the road toward me. I moved off into the weeds against the fence and kept on running. She pulled even with me, slowing down, and laughed at me out the window. “I guess I sure got my answer about you, Will Barnett. A cute kid like you! You need me more than you can guess.”
I didn’t even glance at her but kept on pumping my legs, feeling angry with her and myself for ever getting in her car.
She continued to drive alongside me, laughing, but it sounded forced. Then she sped up and pulled onto the highway, turning south toward Animas.
My feet and mind were racing as I reached the highway, and without slowing I turned north toward Cotton City and kept on running.
* * *
So, as I write this morning, I know that Lance and I have to brace for things. We’re lucky we’ve had a little time to relax before the crops are ready for harvest and before football season hits. Still, some of my time is taken up with football practice, and Lance does lots of art projects for Mr. Drummond, the art teacher. Maybe we’ve had enough time to get to know and trust each other before the trouble starts. I can almost feel it coming, though, like thunder rolling off in the distance, getting closer with each lightning strike.
I think our lives will be all right if we just rely on each other. I know he’s got emotional problems. Big ones. Like that day that he, Mama, May, and I went to get his stuff over in the company town of Playas and his own mother just let him go without saying anything to him—like “sorry for the hell your home life has been”—or even just good-bye. Looking in from the outside, and always knowing Mama loved us kids, I can’t really know Lance’s deep hurt.
So as I told Uncle Sean, Lance just needs somebody to love him. And that somebody is me.
Also, I’m sure Lance is homesick for the green and water, the clouds and rain of New Orleans. I remember when I saw him sitting out on that rock ledge, the first thing he told me was how much like hell the country around here looked.
Hurt and homesick or not, I have to give him this: he isn’t a slacker when it comes to helping me and May with the farm work. At first, he got sore and got hurt a couple of times, but he never complains, even when we have to get up at four in the morning to get things done before school. He’s eager to be a part of my family, to get to know my three sisters, May, Rita, and Trinket, and they feel the same about him. He was a little more standoffish with Mama, at first, but Mama couldn’t stop herself from showing him the love he must’ve missed all his life. So over the past couple of months, as he’s settled into our family, he and Mama have developed a kind of mother-son thing. It was self-conscious, maybe, on both their parts—Lance because he was kind of gun-shy about giving out too much affection and risking having it thrown back in his face, and Mama because Lance and I are sleeping together and we haven’t denied what that means.
Of course, now I see that’s a problem, since everybody in my family knows—even Trinket. She’s probably too young to understand, but I bet even if Mrs. Collins hadn’t heard it from Rick Zumwalt, as she said, she would eventually have learned it from Trinket, since my little sister spends the night over there a lot with her friend Julie. May has known from the beginning, and it wasn’t long before Rita caught on. That’s probably where the real problem came from. Her boyfriend Rick caught on, too, and started out by asking Rita a lot of questions. He’s over for supper almost every night of the week, because they’re serious about each other. I feel kind of uneasy around him, especially when we’re all in the living room visiting. One night, he seemed real interested in Lance, asking where he was from. Lance and I were sitting on the couch together, though not as close as we sit with the family when there’s nobody else there. Lance just answered his questions mechanically. He grew tired, even among us, talking about his ste
pfather and the past, so he gave Rick the facts without offering explanation.
“You have a girlfriend, though?” Rick persisted, looking directly at Lance, then at me, kind of smiling lopsided and curious. I saw Rita’s face. She was embarrassed. She caught my eye, and I could see apology there.
So I figured trouble might be coming our way. I just never dreamed Rick would tell Mrs. Collins. I should have figured they would know each other. Although Hachita and Cotton City are in different counties and are forty miles apart, we’re so intertwined in this southwest part of the state, everybody knows everybody else. Everybody has gone to the same high school for several years, since they closed the high school in Hachita in 1962. We all know Rick’s family, even though he’s from over near Cotton City. They’re big farmers compared to us. He has a whole bunch of brothers, and his family has been in the area for generations. Rick’s been out of school for a year, but he and Rita met in high school. He’s a real tough guy and, until yesterday, I thought he was all right—except for his curiosity about me and Lance. After that night when he asked Lance if he had a girlfriend, I got Rita off by herself and asked her point-blank why Rick was so interested. Rita started crying and I felt like wrapping my arms around her. “He figured out about you and Lance, Will. He’s not stupid, you know.”
“But did you tell him he was right?”
That’s when she looked away, and I went real gentle on her saying I understood, though I was angry and my heart was pounding and my breath was short. So I should have known people were going to talk.
I need to backtrack just a little, now that I’m trying to get things down in order.
I’ll write it down after supper tonight, when Lance is studying.
* * *
Lance came into our lives two days before Daddy died. That was just this summer in late July. I met him when I was out hiking west of our farm. He had run away from home after his stepfather had beat on him. Then he had wandered in the desert for much of that day and spent the night there. His stepfather was going to work in the Phelps-Dodge copper smelting plant nearby. Lance thought his stepfather had brought him to hell, and with the beating he got the day they arrived, he decided he couldn’t take it any more. But he didn’t get far from home and was looking rough by the time I found him. He was ready to fight me off the rock ledge where he was sitting. Only it didn’t frighten me a bit, because he was so little. And even though his face was bruised, I could tell he was just about the prettiest boy I’d ever seen. Ever since Uncle Sean had moved off to California, I had been lonely, and from the first time I laid eyes on Lance, I just knew I had to help him.
Lance Page 2