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.
&n
bsp; 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.
Murphy watched in astonishment, then looked at Rex, who shrugged at her. He still hadn’t seemed to notice she had breasts. “That’s my girl.” When Leeda surfaced, he barreled in after her.
Murphy stared for another moment, then looked at the tree she’d been sitting under. She reached up to the long limb and wrapped her arms around it, pulling her feet to it like a monkey and yanking herself up. She stood on the limb, holding her hands back behind her against the trunk.
“Oh, Murphy, please don’t. The lake’s shallow. There’re rocks in here.”
Murphy smiled at Leeda, then took a running leap off the tree, squeezing herself into a cannonball and sailing far, far out. She landed and went under. The water was as cool and refreshing as a gin and tonic in August. She let out her breath and let herself sink to the bottom.
When she came back up, Leeda was on top of her, tugging at her by the shoulders to pull her out farther.
“Oh my God, are you okay? Are you okay?”
Murphy spit water in a big fat stream onto Leeda’s face. Leeda’s eyes widened for a second, and then she splashed her back, getting Murphy right up the nostrils. Murphy let out a loud “Ha!”
“You scared the hell out of me!” Leeda squealed.
“Ha ha ha.” Murphy looked over Leeda’s shoulder at Rex.
He had lounged back in the water, fanning his arms out slowly. “We’re very impressed,” he said, sounding the opposite of impressed.
Murphy scowled at him. But she felt the words anyway and the way he looked at her, like she was small. She turned to Leeda with a forced grin. “I think Dad’s mad at me,” she stage-whispered.
Leeda looked behind her at Rex, then down at the water. “There’s probably all sorts of snakes in here and lizards and stuff. I think I’m gonna get out.” As she turned to head to shore, Murphy tackled her waist.
They both went tumbling down, laughing, sending glossy rings rippling across the lake.
Chapter Seven
Leeda stretched out on the bank, her wet hair slapping the backs of her shoulders, her chest heaving with her breath. Goose bumps crawled on her skin in the cool spring air. She hadn’t been swimming in ages. Lain by the pool, yes. The Cawley-Smiths had summer whenever they wanted, and she’d spent several winter weekends by pools in L.A., Miami, and the Keys. But she didn’t really like to get wet, and she rarely swam.
Beside her, Rex had splayed out on his back, holding her hand gently in his, the way he always did, like a big brother letting her know he was there. Murphy splashed around in the cold water, occasionally calling to them. “Hey, guys, there’s an alligator, help!” “I’ve got a cramp and I can’t make it to shore.” “Oh my God, what’s that?!” Duck diving. Back diving in little flips in the water.
Her energy was infectious. Leeda remembered Murphy from school clearly now. She was the kind of girl who had always intimidated Leeda—sharp, strong, acid. There was a small percentage of people at Bridgewater High who weren’t interested in Leeda Cawley-Smith in some way. She figured Murphy was probably one of them.
Leeda went to tons of parties. Her friends threw ones where just about everybody invited was nice to look at, there were vodka ice blocks instead of kegs, and everyone fooled around in the bedrooms and passed out. But Murphy was never at those parties.
“Aren’t you freezing?” Leeda called.
In response Murphy leapt into the air and sank beneath the water like a pin, then splashed onto her back and stroked to the other edge.
Leeda glanced at Rex from time to time to see if he was watching.
“I think she has more fun doing nothing than I ever do,” Leeda said.
Rex was looking at the sky. “I think it’s mostly show.”
Leeda watched Murphy a while longer, wondering.
“I guess we should go soon,” she said, yawning. “Hey, Murphy, are you ready to go back?”
Murphy emerged from the water dripping, looking like a fertility goddess with all her curves. “Sure. Whatever.”
They stood up and Leeda shivered, letting Rex put his arm around her and rub her shoulders to warm her up. She led them back through the pecan grove, where the dwarfy, droopy acres of peach trees were replaced by huge stately trunks with crackled, sheathy skins. When they reached it, Murphy let out a breath. “Wow.”
“It’s pretty, huh?”
“Sure,” Murphy said, regaining her edge.
The pecan trees were lined up in two perfect rows. Leeda knew from Uncle Walter that they were at least a hundred and fifty years old and still produced nuts. The Darlingtons had neglected the pecans for years, but in the summers Poopie sent Birdie to gather them and made a mean pecan pie. Leeda knew it was time-consuming to harvest pecans, and for the first time it occurred to her that maybe they didn’t harvest them because they couldn’t afford to.
“It looks like the land of the giants,” Murphy said.
Leeda had never looked at it that way, but it was true. There was something creepy about the trees standing in rows, holding their branches out above them like the marines had held out their swords at her uncle Gabriel’s military wedding.
“I’ve always hated the woods,” Leeda whispered. “But I like this.”
“This isn’t exactly the woods.”
“I know that. I’m just saying, I don’t really like trees.”
Murphy squinted at her, her green eyes narrowed. “How can you not like trees? That’s like not liking water, or the sun, or breathing.”
“She just doesn
’t,” Rex said irritably, squeezing Leeda’s arm protectively.
But Murphy didn’t acknowledge him. “You have a childhood tree trauma?”
Leeda nodded. Rex knew all her humiliating childhood stories, but Murphy looked dubious. It made Leeda want to defend herself.
“I used to really like climbing trees when I was little.” She paused, waiting for Murphy to ask her to go on, which Murphy didn’t. “Daddy said it wasn’t ladylike and I shouldn’t do it, but you know.”
“Did you have a little pony?” Murphy asked teasingly.
Leeda ignored her. “Anyway, one day I got stuck way up in one of the trees in the backyard. I called for help, but nobody would come get me down. So I’m traumatized.” She finished quickly because Murphy looked bored, and Leeda prickled with annoyance and embarrassment, shutting her mouth in a tight line.
“Well, how long were you up there?” Murphy asked. Leeda could tell by the tone of her voice that she thought the whole thing was silly.
“Forget it.” She leaned closer to Rex.
“It was about six hours,” Rex answered for her. He always remembered everything.
“Six hours, really,” Murphy said, disbelieving.
Leeda sighed, frustrated, seeing very clearly how Murphy saw her and not liking it. “My mom came out on the deck with a drink in her hand and sat for about an hour and watched, but she didn’t lift a finger. I was crying and crying and she just watched me and drank.” Leeda paused again, remembering the day with the lump in her throat she often got when she thought of things her mom had done to show her how she didn’t measure up. “To teach me a lesson, I guess. I was out there way past dark. My sister thought it was hilarious.”
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